insert

Insert tags work much like include tags, except that insert tags are not cached when you have template caching enabled. They will be executed on every invocation of the template.

Let's say you have a template with a banner slot at the top of the page. The banner can contain any mixture of HTML, images, flash, etc. so we can't just use a static link here, and we don't want this contents cached with the page. In comes the insert tag: the template knows #banner_location_id# and #site_id# values (gathered from a config file), and needs to call a function to get the banner contents.

{* example of fetching a banner *}
{insert name="getBanner" lid=#banner_location_id# sid=#site_id#}

In this example, we are using the name "getBanner" and passing the parameters #banner_location_id# and #site_id#. Smarty will look for a function named insert_getBanner() in your PHP application, passing the values of #banner_location_id# and #site_id# as the first argument in an associative array. All insert function names in your application must be prepended with "insert_" to remedy possible function name-space conflicts. Your insert_getBanner() function should do something with the passed values and return the results. These results are then displayed in the template in place of the insert tag. In this example, Smarty would call this function: insert_getBanner(array("lid" => "12345","sid" => "67890")); and display the returned results in place of the insert tag.

If you supply the "assign" attribute, the output of the insert tag will be assigned to this template variable instead of being output to the template. NOTE: assigning the output to a template variable isn't too useful with caching enabled.

If you supply the "script" attribute, this php script will be included (only once) before the insert function is executed. This is the case where the insert function may not exist yet, and a php script must be included first to make it work. The path can be either absolute, or relative to $trusted_dir. When security is enabled, the script must reside in $trusted_dir.

The Smarty object is passed as the second argument. This way you can reference and modify information in the Smarty object from within the insert function.