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> Good PHP code exists, it only got a bad name due to "web developers" with no formal programming education stumbling across PHP and going "aha this can generat

> Good PHP code exists, it only got a bad name due to "web developers" with no formal programming education stumbling across PHP and going "aha this can generate my html etc" and then proceeding to make a pile of mistakes. It got a bad name due to the weird nature of PHP which is still a template engine , no matter how much features you had on top. It's like developing webapps in pure HAML, Jinja or Handlebars. PHP also has a lot of bad design language wise, due to the incompetence of its creator and early maintainers when it comes to language design.

throwaway1974 10y ago
PHP "can be" used as a templating engine, but its not the right way to do it nor do you have to use it in that manner. The correct way is to use Twig for your templates PHP is alot more than a "templating engine" if thats all you think of it then that is your choice
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Template engines are one of the more ridiculous inventions on the web, if you think of it. Doubly so if you have them in PHP, which is a perfectly good template engine - sure the syntax could be better, but the popular templating engines are even worse at any but most trivial tasks. They all start as an attempt to remove the possibility of writing meaningful code in them[0], and then grow cruft until they become Turing-complete due to the needs. The more stupid thing about them, which transcends PHP and touches all other programming languages, is the very idea of assembling HTML piecemal from unstructured text. HTML is a textual representation of a tree, and should always be constructed as such - and not by gluing strings together. It's kind of the same problem as with SQL injections, which would not be possible in the first place if people weren't gluing them together from strings. I'll probably get flamed for saying that, but really - many of the popular tools on the web are broken on a fundamental, conceptual level. [0] - because of a misunderstanding of the "don't write logic in your views" principle; sure, don't write business logic in your views, but that doesn't mean you don't need, or shouldn't use, a real programming language in your views.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    Couldn't agree more. I've had decent success using an xml-object based approach, so certain structured parts of the template (navigation, form controls, etc) are built programmatically using dom methods and then serialised into the template.
  - codedokode 10y ago
    PHP actually is a bad templating engine for HTML because it doesn't have a feature to convert special characters to HTML entities by default. It is easy to forget a call to htmlspecialchars() (especially for beginners) so the code gets vulnerable to XSS. That is why you should prefer Twig or other templating engine with autoescaping. > They all start as an attempt to remove the possibility of writing meaningful code I don't think so. Twig developers have a large list of reasons on their frontpage: http://twig.sensiolabs.org/ http://twig.sensiolabs.org/
    - megous 10y ago
      Not much difference: <?= escape($var) ?> {{ var | escape }} Nevertheless, I used DOM/libxml on the server side in PHP/C, since 10 years ago, and was happy about it. It avoids all the other the template issues (balancing open/close tags, etc.) very well. A few helper functions and you're good to go, with simplicity, flexibility and speed you will not get from any templating library in PHP. Though, some coding customers don't know what to make of it. Some people have trouble with not being able to see HTML in the code, because "where do I paste my Google Analytics code?".
      - codedokode 10y ago
        Twig does not require you to write escape so you can have to write just {{ var }} That is a big difference because beginners always forget about escaping. > Nevertheless, I used DOM/libxml on the server side in PHP/C, There used to be XSLT templates but they don't seem to be popular now. Constructing DOM trees in the code without using templates is probably inconvinient and produces bloated code.
juandazapata 10y ago
Replace "PHP" with "JavaScript" and you will have another true statement.

throwaway1974 10y ago

PHP "can be" used as a templating engine, but its not the right way to do it nor do you have to use it in that manner. The correct way is to use Twig for your templates PHP is alot more than a "templating engine" if thats all you think of it then that is your choice

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Template engines are one of the more ridiculous inventions on the web, if you think of it. Doubly so if you have them in PHP, which is a perfectly good template engine - sure the syntax could be better, but the popular templating engines are even worse at any but most trivial tasks. They all start as an attempt to remove the possibility of writing meaningful code in them[0], and then grow cruft until they become Turing-complete due to the needs. The more stupid thing about them, which transcends PHP and touches all other programming languages, is the very idea of assembling HTML piecemal from unstructured text. HTML is a textual representation of a tree, and should always be constructed as such - and not by gluing strings together. It's kind of the same problem as with SQL injections, which would not be possible in the first place if people weren't gluing them together from strings. I'll probably get flamed for saying that, but really - many of the popular tools on the web are broken on a fundamental, conceptual level. [0] - because of a misunderstanding of the "don't write logic in your views" principle; sure, don't write business logic in your views, but that doesn't mean you don't need, or shouldn't use, a real programming language in your views.
- stephenr 10y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I've had decent success using an xml-object based approach, so certain structured parts of the template (navigation, form controls, etc) are built programmatically using dom methods and then serialised into the template.
- codedokode 10y ago
  PHP actually is a bad templating engine for HTML because it doesn't have a feature to convert special characters to HTML entities by default. It is easy to forget a call to htmlspecialchars() (especially for beginners) so the code gets vulnerable to XSS. That is why you should prefer Twig or other templating engine with autoescaping. > They all start as an attempt to remove the possibility of writing meaningful code I don't think so. Twig developers have a large list of reasons on their frontpage: http://twig.sensiolabs.org/ http://twig.sensiolabs.org/
  - megous 10y ago
    Not much difference: <?= escape($var) ?> {{ var | escape }} Nevertheless, I used DOM/libxml on the server side in PHP/C, since 10 years ago, and was happy about it. It avoids all the other the template issues (balancing open/close tags, etc.) very well. A few helper functions and you're good to go, with simplicity, flexibility and speed you will not get from any templating library in PHP. Though, some coding customers don't know what to make of it. Some people have trouble with not being able to see HTML in the code, because "where do I paste my Google Analytics code?".
    - codedokode 10y ago
      Twig does not require you to write escape so you can have to write just {{ var }} That is a big difference because beginners always forget about escaping. > Nevertheless, I used DOM/libxml on the server side in PHP/C, There used to be XSLT templates but they don't seem to be popular now. Constructing DOM trees in the code without using templates is probably inconvinient and produces bloated code.

juandazapata 10y ago

Replace "PHP" with "JavaScript" and you will have another true statement.