Another three hours later, heh. I've never used ASP before, so I've no idea how it works. If it's anything like Perl/CGI, which is what I started out with, where you generate HTML using the language's equivalent of the print function, then I really do appreciate PHP's embedded nature. The separation of presentation from logic is very important, I agree. With PHP, you've got the flexibility to choose to what degree you perform this separation. The ability to easily insert small snippets of code inline is a godsend. In my own code, I keep 99% of the programming separate from the markup and insert it where I need to using includes or classes.



The variables embedded in this example might be set by a function or class that either generates or includes the surrounding HTML code. For example, a function to display the pages heading might be similar to the following.



This is a pretty crappy example, but I hope it demonstrates at least to some degree how it's perfectly possible to separate presentation from logic. I'm going to cut myself some slack either way since I've just woken up from a grand four hours of sleep.

Edit: As far as maintainability goes, here's a more concrete example of how easy it is to update an entire site with PHP just by editing a line or two in an include file.



Here you see the ability for a site to update it's menu simply by modifying the array in the file includes.php. This method allows you to be flexible in the maintenance of your site while leaving the styling of the menu completely separate from the PHP coding. An alternative would be to allow you to pass the menu items to the print_menu function inside of the HTML code.

Oh god I love you, Morm. I certainly wasn't expecting a reply like this.

In ASP, you can embed code in the same way you do with PHP, and it's parsed out by the server all the same, but it always seemed like an oil and water situation to me. The other way ASP works is with an actual code page behind the .aspx 'face.'

Example:

hello.aspx


Now if you want to change that label when the page loads...

hello.aspx.vb


I can do the same thing with any object on the page that has been defined through ASP. The aspx.vb (or aspx.c if that's your language of choice) is completely separated from the html. Like I said, I could embed that subroutine right into the aspx page and it would be parsed out all the same, but the line between presentation and logic is more clearly drawn with the separate code page.

I like the way you do things. I guess I didn't get far enough into learning this yet to see that you can still keep your PHP in a separate file and include it in your html. I feel much better already.

It's worth noting that Clearsilver separates logic from presentation in much the same way as ASP, except less stupidly and independent of language.

I also started work on an offline templating system a while back (before seeing Clearsilver) that behaves kind of like that. You define a template for presentation that makes references to variables for things that vary from page to page. Then you write each page as a Lua script that defines these variables. Using something like GNU make, you smush the pages and templates together, and the resulting HTML output gives you your site. I've got some code up, but it doesn't make much sense as I'm pretty sure I wrote it in a half-hour on my 40th hour of consciousness a while back.