ptal

p(HP) t(emplate) a(ttribute) l(anguage)
a ZPT like templating system in PHP

Modeled after the Zope Page Templates (ZPT) ptal uses standard HTML-Tag with special attributes to define templates.

Benefit: The templates can be edited in any HTML-Editor and preview as normal HTML

Example simple Page Template:
<h3 ptal:content="title" class="h3">The Title</h3>
<blockquote ptal:content="description">The Description</blockquote>
<h1 ptal:replace="body">The <b>Body</b></h1>

generic syntax
<tag attribute="value" ptal:[macroname]="[macro params]">
    content with <b>markup</b> and further
    <span ptal:[othermacro]="params">ptal markup</span>
</tag>

'[macroname]' and '[othermacro]' are names for macro-functions that take some fixed params and the ptal-params, and return whatever they like.
The return will replace the complete <tag></tag>
(macros can return the tag-markup and content but don't need to)

The processing of the page need to start from the outside in - this is to make loops etch possible: A ptal-tag might call a for-in like macro that takes the enclosed ptal-markup as template for the loop-output

ptals make 'content-filtering' and transformation via enclosing ptals possible
<span ptal:make_js="">[the whole reset of content]</span>
-> make_js could now mangle the whole page into js write('') calls and return that

!! ptals might even return more ptal mark-up !!
-> carefull to prevent deadlocks..
-> this could be handled by introducing a 'level of recursion' setting:
    the return of a ptal will be checked for ptals, but only n-times
    => each ptal expansion will always return a string w/o ptal markup (can be empty)

Due to a limitation in the current regex-based ptal parser it handles nested tags incorrectly:

<span ptal:foreachin="elem list">
  <span ptal:write="elem"></span>
  multipied with 2 gives:
  <span ptal:multiply="elem 2"></span>
  <br>
</span>

(the regex based approach is to simple here, it dosn't balance open/close tags in any way, so it will natch from a starting tag to the first closing tag it encounters, even if the same tag name has been opened again)

Workaround is to use different tag (HTML or other) to nest ptals.
<p ptal:foreachin="elem list">
  <span ptal:write="elem"></span>
  multipied with 2 gives:
  <span ptal:multiply="elem 2"></span>
  <br>
</p>


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