Template Syntax ¶

The best resource to learn Smarty template syntax is its official documentation you can find at www.smarty.net. Additionally there are Yii-specific syntax extensions described below.

Setting object properties ¶

There's a special function called set that allows you to set common properties of the view and controller. Currently available properties are title, theme and layout:

{set title="My Page"}
{set theme="frontend"}
{set layout="main.tpl"}

For title there's dedicated block as well:

{title}My Page{/title}

Setting meta tags ¶

Meta tags could be set like to following:

{meta keywords="Yii,PHP,Smarty,framework"}

There's also dedicated block for description:

{description}This is my page about Smarty extension{/description}

Calling object methods ¶

Sometimes you need calling

Importing static classes, using widgets as functions and blocks ¶

You can import additional static classes right in the template:

{use class="yii\helpers\Html"}
{Html::mailto('eugenia@example.com')}

If you want you can set custom alias:

{use class="yii\helpers\Html" as="Markup"}
{Markup::mailto('eugenia@example.com')}

Extension helps using widgets in convenient way converting their syntax to function calls or blocks. For regular widgets function could be used like the following:

{use class='@yii\grid\GridView' type='function'}
{GridView dataProvider=$provider}

For widgets with begin and end methods such as ActiveForm it's better to use block:

{use class='yii\widgets\ActiveForm' type='block'}
{ActiveForm assign='form' id='login-form' action='/form-handler' options=['class' => 'form-horizontal']}
    {$form->field($model, 'firstName')}
    <div class="form-group">
        <div class="col-lg-offset-1 col-lg-11">
            <input type="submit" value="Login" class="btn btn-primary" />
        </div>
    </div>
{/ActiveForm}

If you're using particular widget a lot, it is a good idea to declare it in application config and remove {use class call from templates:

'components' => [
    'view' => [
        // ...
        'renderers' => [
            'tpl' => [
                'class' => 'yii\smarty\ViewRenderer',
                'widgets' => [
                    'blocks' => [
                        'ActiveForm' => '\yii\widgets\ActiveForm',
                    ],
                ],
            ],
        ],
    ],
],

Referencing other templates ¶

There are two main ways of referencing templates in include and extends statements:

{include 'comment.tpl'}
{extends 'post.tpl'}

{include '@app/views/snippets/avatar.tpl'}
{extends '@app/views/layouts/2columns.tpl'}

In the first case the view will be searched relatively to the current template path. For comment.tpl and post.tpl that means these will be searched in the same directory as the currently rendered template.

In the second case we're using path aliases. All the Yii aliases such as @app are available by default.

CSS, JavaScript and asset bundles ¶

In order to register JavaScript and CSS files the following syntax could be used:

{registerJsFile url='http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false' position='POS_END'}
{registerCssFile url='@assets/css/normalizer.css'}

If you need JavaScript and CSS directly in the template there are convenient blocks:

{registerJs key='show' position='POS_LOAD'}
    $("span.show").replaceWith('<div class="show">');
{/registerJs}

{registerCss}
div.header {
    background-color: #3366bd;
    color: white;
}
{/registerCss}

Asset bundles could be registered the following way:

{use class="yii\web\JqueryAsset"}
{JqueryAsset::register($this)|void}

Here we're using void modifier because we don't need method call result.

URLs ¶

There are two functions you can use for building URLs:

<a href="{path route='blog/view' alias=$post.alias}">{$post.title}</a>
<a href="{url route='blog/view' alias=$post.alias}">{$post.title}</a>

path generates relative URL while url generates absolute one. Internally both are using \yii\helpers\Url.

Additional variables ¶

Within Smarty templates the following variables are always defined:

• $app, which equates to \Yii::$app
• $this, which equates to the current View object

Accessing config params ¶

Yii parameters that are available in your application through Yii::$app->params->something could be used the following way:

`{#something#}`