Smarty

[AbuAnas]

Hi,


I am using a Smarty template in the following manner:

STEP 1: Make an SQL query and retrieve a result set
STEP 2: Assign each record to an object and insert it itno an array
STEP 3: Pass the objects array to a smarty template..
STEP 4: Use template section to print the array contents (each object values)

Now, each object of those has one property (variable) which its value is a number that represents a look-up forign key that reference another table..

I would like the template to print out a value (i.e. a name) from the another table insted of the id of the record without altering the structure of my objects..

To make things clearer let me give an example:

Let me assume that I have those different tables:

Department
----------------
ID
NAME


Employee
---------------
ID
NAME
EMAIL
DEPT_ID --> ref_to_department_table


and assume that I have two objects one for each table and having the same field name vars.. If I passed an array of the employee objects to the template it will print out the dept id's where I want it to list the employee's with their dept's name..


Any idea how can I do it in the most proper way??

[messju]

I'd join the two tables in in the sql-query and assign one array of objects where each object contains the necessary information about employer and department.

[AbuAnas]

My design is object-driven, and I am using OOP approches, every access to the database is done by DataAccessObjects which populate my business logic objects.. So to have a join value for each look up data fileds means I have to change ALL my design to suit the presentation and this is a major violation of logic and presentation separation rule..

[messju]

If you do an OO approach, then $employee->DEPT should be a reference to a $dept (an instance of class Department).

Is that what you want?
you can construct this easily in php and assign an array of objects with subobjects to smarty and access things like {$employee->dept->name}

Of course you can also:
- assign a array of $employees
- assign a (hash-array) of $department, with the keys being the DEPT_IDs and the values being the department-objects.

then you can lookup the department inside the template:
{foreach from=$employees item=$employer}
{assign var=dept_id value=$employer->dept_id}
{assign var=dep value=$department.$dept_id}
{* access $employer and his $dept here *}
{/foreach}

but then you do the lookup of the department in the template, and not in the php. this is a (minor) violation of separating business-logic and display-logic, IMHO.