Sharpy functions and modifiers
In my last post I introduced Sharpy – a view engine designed to allow developers and designers to work together. Today I’m going to list all the different functions and modifiers available and give a short description of how each works.
Update: I have updated the documentation on the project homepage with all the information here and also added examples for all variable modifiers.
As I mentioned in my last post I designed Sharpy with extensibility in mind. This means I had to create interfaces to allow other developers to write their own functions and modifiers. To accommodate this I have identified 3 different types of functions – block functions, inline functions and expression functions.
Block Functions
Block functions, such as foreach, have both a start and end tag with content between the tags.
Capture – all the content between the tags is evaluated and stored into the specified variable
{capture name='captured'}
<p>This is captured output</p>
{/capture}Foreach – iterates through the specified list of items. A foreachelse tag can also be used and will be evaluated if the source list is null or empty. Note – the list of items must be of type IList. Update: In the latest release this has been changed to IEnumerable.
{foreach from=$numbers item='number'}
<li>{$number}</li>
{/foreach}Literal – allows a block of data to be taken literally. Typically used around Javascript or stylesheet blocks where the markup would be incorrectly interpreted.
{literal}
function serverName(name, ip){
alert("Current server\n" + name + "\n" + ip);
}
{/literal}Strip – removes all unnecessary whitespace and carriage returns
{* will be put into one line upon output *}
{strip}
<ul>
<li>1</li>
<li>2</li>
<li>3</li>
</ul>
{/strip}Expression functions
Expression functions are similar to block functions, except that the entire opening tag is treated as an expression.
*If **– evaluates the expression as a boolean value and executes the appropriate content. Can also be used with a *else or elseif tag.
{if $name eq 'Bob'}
<p>Hello, 'Bob'</p>
{elseif $name eq 'Steve'}
<p>Hello, 'Steve'</p>
{else}
<p>Hello, '{$name}'<p>
{/if}Inline functions
Inline functions contain a single tag – there is no closing tag or content.
Assign – assigns a value to a variable.
{assign var='name' value='Bob'}Cycle – used to alternate a set of values. Typically used to alternate between two or more colours in a table.
{foreach from=$Model item='number'}
<li style='background-color:{cycle values='#eeeeee,#d0d0d0'}'>{$number}</li>
{/foreach}Include – used to include a partial view.
{include file='~/Views/Home/Partial.sharpy'}LDelim, RDelim – used to escape the syntax delimiters, { and }.
<p>The delimiters in Sharpy are {ldelim} and {rdelim}</p>Variable Modifiers
| Variable modifiers can be applied to any expression. To apply a modifier, specify the expression followed by a | (pipe) and the modifier name. Modifiers can accept additional parameters. These parameters follow the modifier name and are separated by a : (colon). Modifiers can also be combined, for example {$title | upper | escape}. |
- Capitalize – used to capitalize the first letter of all words
- Cat – used to concatenate strings
- Count characters – used to count the number of characters
- Count paragraphs – used to count the number of paragraphs
- Count sentences – used to count the number of sentences
- Count words – used to count the number of words
- Date format – formats a date variable according to the specified format
- Default – used to specify a default value for a variable in the case the variable is null or empty
- Escape – similar to the Html.Encode method
- Indent – used to indent a string on each line
- Lower – used to convert a variable to lowercase
- Nl2br – converts all line breaks to
tags - Regex replace – performs a regular expression search and replace
- Replace – performs a simple string search and replace
- Spacify – inserts a space between every character
- String format – similar to the String.Format method
- Strip – replaces all repeated spaces, newlines and tabs with a single space (or the supplied string)
- Strip tags – strips out markup tags, basically anything between < and >
- Truncate – used to truncate a variable to a character length
- Upper – used to convert a variable to uppercase
- Word wrap – used to wrap to a column width
Most of the variable modifiers have optional parameters to modify their behaviour. For example, the word wrap function wraps to a default column width of 80 and uses a newline to wrap words. If we wanted to wrap on a column length of 30 characters and use a
<br />to wrap words we would use
{$name|wordwrap|30|’<br />’}project homepage your best bet would be to look at the Smarty documentation or have a look at the unit tests.
Happy coding.