x:template 0.5 released

I'm quite proud to announce the next beta release of x:template. This version is a big step towards the first major release of the engine. I implemented some very important features like separated main- and subviews or a PHPUnit test environment. I also enhanced the performance to provide some reliable speed in applications which cannot be cached.

Another thing I like to announce is the x:template PHP extension which I'm developing at the moment. The extension provides nearly the same public interface as the PHP version, but - at the same time - is a lot faster than any PHP implementation I could figure out.

If nothing goes dramatically wrong, you can test the first alpha version of the extension in June '12. Please check this site for further information.

Main- & Subviews

From now on, there are two kinds of view classes which you can choose. It's quite simple:

  • Choose XTemplate\View if you're working with a full template including a doctype
  • Choose XTemplate\SubView if you're working with an incomplete HTML template such as a module template of a CMS

Of couse there are still the XTemplate\ComfortView and now the XTemplate\ComfortSubView classes if you're working with a fixed template<->class relation.

Integrationtest & Unittests

x:template now has two kinds of tests which will be performed when you launch the testsuite. At first the unittests which use the great PHPUnit framework will be executed. Then the integrationtests are executed.

The testsuite can be executed on UNIX like system via bash test.sh.

PHP 5.4

On March 1st PHP 5.4 was officially released by the PHP core team. This great piece of software is the future of this fantastic language. Of course x:template is fully tested with PHP 5.4.

Public interface

Although the engine works internally with the PHP DOM API, you really don't need to know. x:template provides a public interface which you can use which is defined by the PHP interfaces in the namespace XTemplate\Interfaces and by the XTemplate\ViewBase class. These files provide access to all features. And this is the interface which will be provided by the native PHP extension, too.