There’s an interesting discussion on github today (courtesy of javascript weekly) about whether rendering templates and template engines in general are obsolete in today’s javascript-heavy applications. This topic seems to come up periodically, although the idea hasn’t really taken off. I think the first time I came across it was in the seaside framework, which is great by the way. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other, so I’ll be interested to see how the discussion develops.
I looked for appropriate answers for this on the smarty site, and the resounding answer was escaping javascript’s {}s with {literal}’s
Smarty template vars and Javascript functions
How to use Javascript codes in template files?
Access Smarty value with javascript
They basically all say to do something like this:
// $question_ids_json = ["1","2","3","4","5"]
{literal}
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
var question_ids = {/literal}{$question_ids_json}{literal};
alert(question_ids[0]);
});
</script>
{/literal}
So they want to put everything in a literal tag, and then basically escape that literal tag when smarty needs to be used.
I didn’t like this, so I put the value in a hidden input and then just retrieved that input in the javascript, thereby keeping the js clean of smarty shenanigans:
<input type="hidden" id="question_ids" value='{$question_ids_json}'/>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
//var question_ids = {$question_ids_json};
var question_ids = eval($('#question_ids').val());
alert(question_ids[0]);
});
</script>
But this is just a matter of personal preference.