Hi all,

I almost forgot to say that I am using Pinnacle Cart to make my website...

My question is basically this...Is it possible to use perl, cgi, php, or javascripts with the smarty template system but without creating a smarty plugin to use it? Another words I have tried adding a php scripts on on my homepage (in the usual way), and it didn't work. It seems you can't with the Smarty Template System. I hope I am wrong and their is a way around this. Meaning withouth having to create the plugin code.

Here's on of my missions:

I am trying to create the 'featured product' script that will random display a product from MYSQL database along with some other info. about that particular product and display it in a neatly formatted table on my homepage. Please help!! I am really trying to get into the groove with Smarty, but am having the "NooBlues".

Brian thanks you in advance!
He Really Does!

You wouldn't be able to use CGI since thats a separate technology, and Javascript is a client side programming language so nothing should stop it from working with Smarty.

Smarty has a {php}{/php} tag that allows you to use PHP within templates:

<strong>Featured Product</strong>
{php}
$products = array(...);

$rand = mt_rand(0, count($products) - 1);

echo '<em>' . $products[$rand] . '</em>';
{/php}

This depends on the value of the $php_handling config value; you may have to alter this value to allow embedded PHP.

Thank you for your help, but I am still having a problem getting it working. This is what the support guy at Pinnacle cart says:

The basic approach would be to create a Smarty plug-in script [ Smarty Online Documentation, Chapter 16 ].

The plug-in would perform a database query on the products table, and select a random product record. The plug-in would then assign the random record to a Smarty array which can be utilized in any of the Smarty template files.

In order to follow the convention for the rest of the cart, it would be advisable to create a Smarty template "box" that can be included on any page of the cart you desire.


Finally, the page(s) on which you want the box to appear, the template box gets included as {include file="boxtemplatefile.html"}.



Thank you for you time Chroder!

-Brian