smarty/RELEASE_NOTES

1.4.0
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IMPORTANT NOTICE

Smarty now has a new syntax for accessing elements within section loops. The
new syntax is easier to use and nicely handles data structures of any
complexity. Consequently, this breaks the old syntax. To fix your current
templates, we have provided a script that will adjust the syntax for you.
Located in misc/fix_vars.php, run this script from the the command line, giving
each template as an argument. Be sure to use absolute pathnames, or pathnames
relative to the executing script. Probably the easiest way to do this is to
copy the fix_vars.php script into your template directory and run 'php -q
fix_vars.php *.tpl' Be sure you have proper write permission, and backup your
scripts first to be safe! The examples in the 1.4.0 documentation have been
updated to reflect the changes.

cd /path/to/templates
cp /path/to/fix_vars.php .
find . -name "*.tpl" -exec php -q ./fix_vars.php {} \;

NEW AND IMPROVED COMPILATION PROCESS

Smarty 1.4.0 also has a new compilation process. Instead of compiling all the
templates up front, it now compiles them at runtime. This has several
advantages. First of all, there is no longer a need to have a single template
directory. You can now have arbitrary template sources, such as multiple
directories or even database calls. This also speeds the performance of Smarty
when $compile_check is enabled, since it is only checking the template that is
being executed instead of everything found in the template directory. The
$tpl_file_ext is no longer needed, but kept for backward compatability.
Templates can now be named anything you like with any extension.

MINOR FIXES

A workaround for LOCK_EX on Windows systems was added, and changed a couple of
file permissions for better security on public servers.

$show_info_header is now defaulted to false instead of true. This header causes
problems when displaying content other than HTML, so now you must explicitly
set this flag to true to show the header information (or change the default in
your copy of Smarty.)

CHANGES/ENHANCEMENTS

date_format, html_select_date and html_select_time used to require a unix
timestamp as the format of the date passed into the template. Smarty is now a
bit smarter at this. It will take a unix timestamp, a mysql timestamp, or any
date string that is parsable by strtotime, such as 10/01/2001 or 2001-10-01,
etc. Just give some formats a try and see what works.

Smarty now has template filters, meaning that you can run your templates
through custom functions before they are compiled. This is good for things like
removing unwanted comments, keeping an eye on words or functionality people are
putting in templates, translating XML -> HTML, etc. See the register_filter
documentation for more info.

Another addition are the so-called compiler functions. These are custom
functions registered by the user that are executed at compilation time of the
template. They can be used to inject PHP code or time-sensitive static content
into the compiled template.

The run-time custom functions are now passed Smarty object as the second
parameter. This can be used, for example, to assign or clear template variables
from inside the custom function.

You can now refer to properties of objects assigned from PHP by using the '->'
symbol and specifying the property name after it, e.g. $foo->bar.

UPGRADE NOTES

The format of the files created in the $compile_dir are now a bit different.
The compiled template filename is the template resource name url-encoded.
Therefore, all compiled files are now in the top directory of $compile_dir.
This was done to make way for arbitrary template resources. Each compiled
template has a header that states what template resource was used to create it.
From a unix command prompt, you can use "head -2 *" to see the first two lines
of each file.

When upgrading to 1.4.0, you will want to clear out all your old files in the
$compile_dir. If you have $compile_check set to false and the compiled template
does not yet exist, it will compile it regardless of this setting. This way you
can clear out the $compile_dir and not worry about setting $compile_check to
true to get the inital compilation under way.

1.3.2
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Smarty now has (an optional) header prepended to the output of the Smarty
templates. This displays the Smarty version and the date/time when the page was
generated. This is useful for debugging your cache routines, and purely
informational so there is evidence that the page was generated by Smarty. Set
$show_info_header to false to disable it.

{config_load ...} performance was tuned by placing the loaded variables into a
global array, so basically a config file is read from the file system and
placed into a php array structure only once, no matter how many times it is
called in any of the templates. The scope of the loaded variables has changed a
bit as well. Variables loaded by config_load used to be treated as global
variables, meaning that parent templates (templates that included the current
template) could see them. Now the default behavior is such that loaded
variables are only visible by the current template and child templates (all
templates included after the {config_load ...} is called.) To mimic the
original behavior, provide the attribute "global=yes" like so: {config_load
file="mystuff.conf" global=yes}. Now when you load in mystuff.conf, the
variables will be visible to parent templates (merged with any existing config
variables.)

A formatting attribute was added to the {math ...} function, adding the ability
to control the format of the output. Use the same formatting syntax as the PHP
function sprintf().

{html_select_time ...} was added, a custom function that works much like
{html_select_date ...} except it displays time elements instead of dates.

A few custom modifiers were added: count_characters, count_words,
count_sentences, count_paragraphs. All pretty self-explanatory.