Inspired by this article I started to play around a bit to integrate the Smarty template engine into the Zend Framework. My ambition was to minimize the required code in the controller actions but stay close to the given Zend_View API. I also wanted to integrate the Smarty caching feature. Here is the code I came up with.
He sets up a directory under his Zend library include path for the templates to live in and starts writing code. The first step is a class that's based off the Zend_View_Abstract class to set the initial Smarty variables. He follows this up with serveral methods - __run, assign, and escape before displaying the results with output().
Finally, he gives an example of how to use the class he's created to spit out a Smarty template with all of the data nicely in place.
More information on the Zend Framework can be found at framework.zend.com, and information on Smarty at smarty.php.net
