Smarty

general consensus

[malcolmcroucher]

Whats the general consensus on smarty?

Use it
Its okay
Avoid it like the plague .

[justgowithit]

Never used it

[Hammer65]

Smarty is pretty good if you are working with a designer that doesn't know PHP very well or at all. If you use a PHP framework it can be used, but it's usually best to do views in the default way.

[phnord]

Smarty is great in the right hands and doesn't get any better for custom tag libraries with PHP. I am working on a large application with custom tags that other designers with only XHTML/CSS skills will be using. Smarty plugged right into my MVC system, no sweat and allows for my designers to not worry about logic and implementation.

But as I said in another post, Smarty is powerful in the right hands, but can get messy and convoluted with a user that doesn't understand basic development concepts. Often it will lead to embedded spaghetti code and the developer cursing Smarty. In reality it's not Smarty, but the developer's poor abilities.

As with all custom tag libraries you are basically adding another layer to your application. Does the project you are doing even need Smarty's abilities?