My last projects are all build with Zend Framework and almost all of my previous projects were created with custom framework using Smarty. I wanted to implement Smarty in Zend Framework and I search through the web to find proper resolution for my problem. I found this article and another one inspired by the first. I tested both approaches but they were not what I was looking for. Inspired by both articles I created my own Smarty – Zend framework implementation.

First creating custom Controller:

<?php
class Base_Controller extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
        
        /** 
         *  DISABLE DEFAULT ZEND FRAMEWORK VIEW  
         */
        public function init()
        {
        
        $this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true);        
        
        }
        
        /**
         *  LOADING SMARTY ON DEMAND
         * 
         */
        public static function LoadSmarty()
        {
                
        include ('smarty/Smarty.class.php');    

        $smarty = new Smarty();
        
        $smarty->template_dir =  template dir ;
        $smarty->compile_dir  = compile dir;
        $smarty->config_dir   = config dir 
        $smarty->cache_dir    = cache dir;
        $smarty->plugins_dir = and plugins ;
        
        
        
        /**
         *  SMARTY CONFIGURATION
         * 
         */
        $smarty->debugging = false;
        $smarty->force_compile = true;
        $smarty->compile_check = true;

        
        /**
         *      SMARTY PLUGINS 
         * 
         */ 
        //include various smarty plugins 
        
        Zend_Registry::set('smarty', $smarty);
        
                        
        }
        
}


?>

This is example of the custom Base Controller, if we want to include Smarty in particular Controller we extend Base Controller

<?php
include ('kernel/Base_Controller.php');

class IndexController extends Base_Controller 
{
     public function indexAction() 
    { 
                
        $this->IncludeSmarty();
        $smarty = Zend_Registry::get('smarty');
        $smarty->assign('title', 'Test Page index');
        
        
        /** DEFINE PAGE TEMPLATES */
        $smarty->display('includes/header.tpl');
        $smarty->display('demo.tpl');
        $smarty->display('includes/footer.tpl');
        
         
        }

/**
         *  FUNCTION FOR LOADING SMARTY
         * 
         * @return smarty object
         */
        
        public static function IncludeSmarty()
        {               
        Base_Controller::LoadSmarty();
        }
}

If we are building some pages, that doesn’t require Smarty or we want it to use Zend_View component the only difference is that the custom controller extends the default Zend_Controller

<?php
include ('kernel/Base_Controller.php');

class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action
// ALL LOGIC HERE

With this approach Smarty will be used only when it is needed and.If we completely skip Zend_View in our custom framework we can avoid the frustrating for me default Zend Framework View directory. structure.