Named conditions in Smarty templates

Problem Statement

Currently, Smarty templates rely on traditional comparison operators such as >, <, <=, >=, ==, and != within {if} statements. However, there are cases where these operators may not always be appropriate or desirable within templates, either due to readability concerns or syntax restrictions. Smarty provides a way to use named conditions (e.g., gt, lt, eq, neq), but this is not currently implemented in the Hazaar Smarty integration.

Who will benefit?

• Developers working with Smarty templates who require clearer and more readable conditionals.
• Users dealing with scenarios where traditional operators may be problematic in certain contexts.

Benefits and risks

Benefits

• Improves template readability and maintainability.
• Aligns Hazaar's Smarty implementation with the broader Smarty feature set.
• Provides an alternative syntax that may be necessary in certain environments.

Risks

• Potential for minor backwards compatibility concerns if existing templates assume only standard operators.
• May introduce additional parsing complexity within the template engine.

Proposed solution

Implement support for named conditions in Smarty templates, allowing conditionals such as:

{if $something gt $somethingelse}

instead of

{if $something > $somethingelse}

This should support all standard named conditions provided by Smarty, including gt, lt, eq, neq, gte, lte, and and or.

Priority/Severity

• High (This will bring a huge increase in performance/productivity/usability/legislative cover)
• Medium (This will bring a good increase in performance/productivity/usability)
• Low (anything else e.g., trivial, minor improvements)