Implemented: Templating

[gilgamesh]

I've implemented templating for Boxover.

Templating would be useful for components that are used a number of time on the one page, especailly when used inside tables. I personally use complicated forms within Boxover inside big tables, so adding templating makes pages that were once half a meg(rediculous), down to a normal size(<50k).


Before I posted the code, I was just wanting to know if anyone had suggestions on the best way to implement the templating syntax.

To define template, I placed the templates in empty span objects placed inside the body tags near the boxover script reference. I use _boxover_templates to determine if templates have been defined, and use _boxover_templates_<template name> to access the component directly. I actually dont know how I would access the sub control from the parent control without looping and doing a id check - which seemed pointless. Replacable fields(merge fields) are indicated by the field name replaced with percentage signs eg. %field%.

	<span id='_boxover_templates'>
		<span id='_boxover_templates_myName' template='Hi my name is %name%. People call me %nick_name%'></span>
		<span id='_boxover_templates_myAge' template='Hi my name is %name% I am %age% years old'></span>
	</span>

(Keep in mind this is a very very simplistic example)

Also, would there be compatability issues using empty SPAN's?


To use the template I added two new fields, one to define the name of the template to use, and a second to define the merge fields and their values. The best idea I could come up with to confide the content - which could be anything - was to use <~ and ~>, separating fields with a semi-colon. I probably will need to change it to something else, Im not confortable with the angled brackets being in there. Maybe (~~), or two characters you wouldn't normally see together:

<span title="header=[Title] template=[myName]  mergefields=[name:<~Gregory William~>;nick_name:<~Greg~>] body=[]">My Templated Popup!</span>

Obviously if you are using HTML inside your boxover you will need to covert it into something friendly to boxover. If you use PHP, I've posted a smarty script somewhere which can be used to make this process automatic.