Book Review – Smarty PHP Template

Author: Hasin Hayder

Publisher: PACT

Rating: 4/5 stars

Smarty PHP Template Programming and Applications is a PACT published book available to buy on amazon. Although the book has been available for some time I thought I would take the opportunity to review it. If you are familiar with template languages you will know there are a lot out there. Smarty however has earned its place as one of the key players and is used across many business platforms.

The premise of this book is to help the user understand the very nature of a template language. This book takes the time to step away from the code and actually look at the benefits of implementing systems which use template languages. You are also given a step by step guide of how to implement the smarty template’s language on your own computer. however this is a brief description, and if I had to criticize the book, I felt that this could have been expended, bearing in mind it is focused on both the developer and the designer.

There are a couple of other issues which can be found in the book. some of the code examples have not stood the test of time and are either outdated or covered in syntax errors. Aside from this, the book is broken down into 2 sections, the first half of the book focuses on how designers can use the smarty, the the other half looks at the tools the developer has to hand. The book although being a good read is also useful as a point of reference, and the official smarty website is notoriously hard to navigate around.

Overall the book is a great resources if you are new to the language, however once, you have mastered the basics the book will soon loose out to online tutroials. It is worth a read if you can get your hands on it, even if you are not currently using templating langauges, as it will talk you through template theories which would help if you are looking to use PHP frameworks such as codeignighter in the future. Overall i would give this book 4/5 stars.