Qiq Templates for PHP 8

This package provides a PHP 8.1+ implementation of the TemplateView pattern using PHP itself as the templating language, along with an optional {{ ... }} syntax for concise escaping and helper use.

Documentation

Read the docs at https://qiqphp.com.

Background

I don't like compiled templates or specialized template languages. Smarty, Twig, etc. are all just too heavy-handed. I don't need a new language, and I don't need to "secure" my templates against designers on my team. I am generally happy with plain PHP as a template language.

However, I do find escaping tedious -- necessary, and easy enough, but tedious. A template helper to output escaped HTML, like this ...

<?= $this->h($var) ?>

... is not that bad -- but even so, it could be a little easier. Imagine this little bit of syntax sugar:

{{h $var }}

All that happens is that {{h ... }} is replaced with <?= $this->h(...) ?>.

Once that is in place, it becomes easy to support helpers, control structures, and other code, all while keeping native PHP as the fallback syntax, because the {{ ... }} tags are essentially stand-ins for PHP tags.

Qiq really is PHP -- just with some syntax sugar when you want it.

History

Qiq's relatives include ...

• The Savant family:
  • Savant 1 and 2
  • Savant 3
  • PEAR Templates_Savant
  • Savvy
• Solar_View
• Aura.View
• Laminas View (nee Zend_View)

This package is more closely related to Aura.View than to the pre-Composer versions of Savant, but does reintroduce the Savant compiler hook ideas.