Good intro to templating with Smarty
The authors do a good job of introducing you to the Smarty templating system. You'll need to have knowledge of PHP if your a programmer or XHTML & CSS if your a designer in order to make use of the Smarty templating system. As the authors state; you don't need both skill sets unless you plan on doing your projects single-handedly. I like the fact that they stick to Smarty & don't try to teach PHP, XHTML & CSS. I have very strong XHTML & CSS skills & very basic PHP & MySQL skills & find that by using Smarty you can greatly simplify looping through arrays & calling variables. I'm impressed by the apparently non-English speaking authors writing skills. I wonder if they have plans of authoring a book on PHP/MySQL & maybe even the Cake PHP development framework? The publisher PacktPub supports Open Source software development with donations from sales to Open Source projects which I consider a plus. Hopefully Open Source will take more market share from the Microsoft monopoly & promote a more innovative & prosperous internet community! Make a donation to the Smarty project if you find it useful.
Good Reference but not everything
I found this book to be a good reference if you are not already familiar with Smarty. It gives you the basics but doesn't get too involved.
I would recommend having some PHP experience first before you buy it.
I bought it to be used as an additional programming help guide to work with X-Cart. It's been good for that.
Overall, it's worth the price.
A book to quickly master Smarty
You are looking for a simple solution to separate your PHP code from the graphics of your website? You work in a team composed of coders and graphists? Then you have already thought about templating!
Without a doubt, Smarty currently is the best templating engine available on the market. It is not famous for its simplicity but for its completeness.
This book is on the same page as the others I had the chance to read from the same editor (Packt Publishing). It was written for a wide public (from beginners to advanced) and it covers most of the subject. Thanks to this book, you will have the ability to quickly master Smarty and to use it during all your projects without many problems.
The introduction does not only handle Smarty, but rather the templating philosophy. You will also find installation walkthroughs, structural and logical Smarty internal processes.
The main part of the book is divided into two parts. The first is directed towards designers with, for the most part, creation of Template files and usage of Smarty functions. A whole chapter is dedicated to application debugging.
The other section is aimed at programmers, with details and explanation on each variable or method used in Smarty. This section is really useful on the long term, since you can come back to it any time.
You now have all the knowledge to start templating on your own, and you won't forget the experience you gained through explanations, step by step, as well as sources illustrating these pages.
You can now go further using Smarty's power by reading the following chapters about caching, plugins usage, filters and internationalization of your website.
To sum up, this is a very good book for those who are interested in Smarty and very useful for those who are already using it. But watch out: Smarty is not to be used in every website. I would like to highlight, however, that its use is far too complex to be used in a static website: you will need some dynamic components to notice any improvement. Actually, Smarty needs you to learn a new language: what you know how to do in PHP most probably has a Smarty equivalent, so that you will need a transition time.
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Amazing Smarty book
No need to hide it, "Smarty PHP Template Programming and Application" is an excellent book!
Whether you are graphic designer or developer, this book is for you, thanks to a clear separation of the needs.
Every step is exposed in details : installation, utility and the way to work with Smarty is clearly explained.
You can add to this a detailed explanation of the various built-in variables and methods, differents way for managing the cache, filters and plugins,... all this makes this book a very good one, covering from he most basic to the most advanced methods.
Moreover, there's a complete chapter on "website internationalization" with Smarty.
To summarize, and I guess you already understood, this is an excellent book that any developer/designer who works with Smarty must read.
Great guide to PHP & Smarty
If you're looking for a good book on Smarty, this one should definitely be on your list. This book takes you through every feature that Smarty offers in an easy-to-understand and practical way, with plenty of clear and concise examples to make it even easier to understand.
It doesn't matter if you're a developer who wants to start using Smarty or if you're a designer who has to start working with Smarty, this book is a great resource for both and thanks to a clear division in the book it's easy to learn about Smarty as a developer or designer.
There aren't many negative things to say about this book, but it isn't perfect either. Sometimes things are explained multiple times, with might cause some slight annoyance, and in some cases parts of an example aren't explained at all, which leaves you wondering what something is used for.
To sum it all up, this book is certainly worth the money, and I can definitely recommend it if you're looking to get started with Smarty.
