How to add one more template engine?

Prepare

First, make a new folder for the engine. Put the engine there, make subfolders for caches (if there are any).

Second, put your engine name into $engine[] array at index.php.

Now the framework is prepared to accept your engine.

Create the module

Usually one can create the module following the existing ones, see "Sigma" module for instance. That's simple. Verbose explanations follow.

On it's first running stage, template framework generates test.html file in every module folder. This file is used as target template for engines to process. It requires the following settings in module config.php file:

• $var_left/$var_right denote variable wrappers. If your variable is {$var}, then it should be:

  $var_left = '{$';
  $var_right = '}';
  

• $block_start/$block_end denote block wrappers. For example, Smarty uses these:

  $block_start = '{section name=i loop=$loop}';
  $block_end = '{/section}';
  

To run your module, create test.php file in it's folder. The file should define "[EngineName]_test" function, which makes use of parameters:

• $path - global parameter, path to your engine folder
• $loop - global parameter, list of data blocks to loop. Each data block is array of ($var => $value)
• (autogenerated) test.html template for data block

The function should return strlen of the output (shown in "Checksum" column). It is used to show generated page length and indicates whether the engine is broken (checksum differs from others).

You might have troubles with making your checksum match other engines' checksums, because of spaces. Few template engines add/remove spaces between data blocks. That is usually solved with correct $block_start/$block_end config params.

Use "wres($res)" function to dump your results into "res.html" file. That should help to debug the output.

Let the others benefit from your work