Template engine

Not. What are you ... Of course it won't be a bicycle. Normal template engines in general it is difficult to find.

Well, for example, you can add a foreach loop, so that you can, for example, output an array of data. So to speak:

 Массив состоит из следующих значений: <FOREACH($VAR_1)> {$VAR_1} <END FOREACH> 

Well, you understand the meaning. You can even bind the array key somehow (i.e., foreach($array as $key => $value) ). For example:

 Массив состоит из следующих значений: <FOREACH($VAR_1$)> {$VAR_1_KEY$}: {$VAR_1$} <END FOREACH> 

You can add performance functions. Well, although you have aliases like this. Generally look here . Pretty good template maker. I like this. The only thing that I would add there from myself is the prohibition of adding a regular php-code (well, I just really need this feature!).

<if {$ ALIAS_1 $ == 123 && $ QUERY $ == 'search'}>

without Evala it will be difficult to parse this block (but in general, it’s real). And eval is always a risk, especially if you do not manage the content. So I’d mean that you can come up with a simpler syntax in which it could be implemented.

Oops, but what about associative arrays to do ...

 {$array.key1.subKey1.subSubKey1} 

After you make the template engine, try using it in some simple but real task. And you will immediately understand if everything is working correctly and what is really missing.

+ I would advise to add more converters.

 {$var156|toTimeStr} 

where toTimeStr is a Kelback function that converts the var156 variable.

After experimenting with this you probably want to add parameters to this converter, for example, to set the time format, so you need to also consider the parameters:

 {$var156|toTimeStr 'Ymd H:i:s'} 

or even named parameters:

 {$var156|toTimeStr format='Ymd H:i:s'} 

in general, there is a big flight of fancy. But first of all, think about what you really need.

As for me - not the best format, in fact, I don’t see any reason to use something like this, pure PHP templating only in profile. If you want to make a really good template engine, then it should be fast and beautiful. In your "concept" I do not see either comfort or beauty (I speak strictly for myself).

And for parsing, most likely you will have to use a bit of everything.

Well and, perhaps, make something to be a humanly visible variable, something like [ someVar ] , { someVar } etc. because I do not know how the rest, but as for me - the readability of such a $var$ code suffers. In general, ideally, it would be nice to write the code so that users could choose their own separators, i.e. let at least {{{{ var }}}} or OLOLOLOvarOLOLOLO do if they want. Well, it is quite important to implement convenient basic helpers and the ability to write your own. Helpers can be, for example, for recursive output, filtering, formatting, etc. etc.

Well, implement caching.

If you write the code correctly - you can easily port to other programming languages.

PS: how will you form a concept - look at existing template engines and think about whether your idea is significantly different, whether you can offer a better product, etc. Of course, this is only if you are not writing for educational purposes only.