Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: theme system Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: gordon Reported by: gordon Updated by: adrian Status: patch Ok. I have (possibly) a spanner to throw in the works. The variables passed to the template appear in which format? I recall now why I didn't include this functionality. Essentially, the template handling code accepts an associative array, and passes each of the elements in the array to the template as a variable .. hence : <?php $vars = array( 'varA' =>'text 1', 'varB' => 'text 2', 'varC' => 'text 3); ?> Is available internally in the template as : <?php $varA = 'text 1'; $varB = 'text 2'; $varC = 'text 3'; ?> Because of how php (and most c based languages work), the called function has to name it's parameters, and with a generic function, the best you can do is numbered variables. Of course, $1 isn't a valid variable name, so the best that could be done is $var1, $var2 , $var3 or something similar. To combat this would probably require rewriting the theme() function to accept an associative array, but the amount of bloat and opportunity for error that causes is phenomenal. The primary reason I am not using a generic template passing function, is that I can't pass well named variables to the template. adrian Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 30, 2005 - 00:31 : gordon Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/theme.inc_1.patch (889 bytes) Attached is a patch that I would like to get into 4.6. I didn't realise it but I am cutting this close. What this patch does is give the ability to theme engines to be able to handle all theme hooks with specifically having to code for them by creating a function {theme engine}_{theme hook} (eg. phptemplate_pager) What I have done to achieve this is I have created a new theme engine hook called theme_handler. This will check to see if the current theme has been set up to include this theme hook, and returns the function that it should called to handle this theme hook. Most the time this would most likely be a generic theme function. This function is then called with exactly the same arguements as the theme() was called with. (eg the theme hook as the first arguement) So in the case of the pager the function is called like so <?php phptemplate_generic("pager", "", 10) ?> The method that I have used, theme engines are not required to use this functionality, as some theme engines such as I think xtemplate will not be able to handle this, but it works extremely well in phptemplate. The reason that I have made this modification is that i can use a theme engine such as phptemplate to create the theme, and if I want to theme any additional features such as pager, menu_tree, I can without having to modify the theme engine from standard. So this gives me the best of both worlds. So with the phptemplate engine all I need to do to make use of the additional functionality is add template file to the themes directly like:- hook = hook.tpl.php, pager = pager.tpl.php, etc. It also means in the case of the phptemplate engine the theme creaters php skills can be limited, and still be able to expand the theme beyond that of the engines capibilities. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 30, 2005 - 00:32 : gordon Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/phptemplate_0.patch (1.12 KB) and here is the patch for the phptemplate engine to make use of this functionality. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 30, 2005 - 19:10 : FactoryJoe@civicspacelabs.org It seems to me that this functionality belongs in PHPTemplate and not another theme engine. Are there any possible security issues raised with using such an open-ended patch? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 14:34 : Anonymous This was part of my original design for the new theme systes, but was removed because it was considered unneccesary complexity that only affected phptemplate. I think this is the right time to add it however, as it allows lots of really creative things. Also, most of the available template engines (smarty , phptal , phptemplate) are based on my original phptemplate code base, and as such will benefit from this patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 14:48 : adrian Bah. I wasn't logged in. Anyway, to answer joe's question .. this needs to be modified in core so that phptemplate can leverage it. It really is only a small change in theme.inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 31, 2005 - 22:10 : gordon Looking at the patch yes I do think there maybe a little security concern. But I am not exactly sure of the best method to employ. 1. I could just return from the theme_handler a true/false and then always call {theme engine}_generic and it can work it all out, which in the case of phptemplate is all that it needs to call. or 2. have the theme_handler return the hook, and then execute it as {theme engine}_{hook} which does give you the added flexibility, but it is not as much of a security issue. Also as said before, we change to core is required so that hooks that are not know by the theme engine have some way of being called. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 06:53 : gordon Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/theme.inc_2.patch (908 bytes) I have made a change to the patch so that the process that is called is called {theme engine}_{returned hook} which I feel is more secure, but gives you more flexibility if the theme engine has the default handles split up for ease of use. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 2, 2005 - 06:54 : gordon Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/phptemplate_1.patch (1.11 KB) and the patch for phptemplate -- View: http://drupal.org/node/16409 Edit: http://drupal.org/project/comments/add/16409