I started using functions widely in an MVc framework. It began when Rails was released, and I thought, how could I copy the "helper" mechanism in a way that mak

I started using functions widely in an MVc framework. It began when Rails was released, and I thought, how could I copy the "helper" mechanism in a way that makes sense for PHP? My answer was to use plain functions as helpers, at first because they could easily become Smarty modifiers, and later realized the function-only pattern worked really well across the whole app. I write code like this... # file: helpers/say_hello.php function say_hello ($params) { $to = $params['to'] ?: $params; return "Hello, {$to}!"; } Which is auto loaded by the framework and usable like this: (PHP): echo say_hello('World'); (Smarty): {say_hello to="World"}