Smarty 2 vs. Smarty 3

Copernica uses the externally developed Smarty template engine, which is based on PHP but a lot easier, so personalization is accessible to everyone. It is not developed by Copernica, but it is well documented by a large army of enthusiasts. See their own documentation here.

In 2011 we upgraded the template engine from version 2 to version 3. The syntax of personalization code used created in smarty 3 is slightly different.

There are a few small things to pay attention to:

Personalization used in existing templates based on Smarty 2 will remain valid after the release (backwards compatible).
When creating a new template, you can still choose to use Smarty version 2, but we advise against this. We will explain the advantages of Smarty 3 in another section of this article.
Smarty 3 has a slightly different syntax in some places. You may run into personalization errors when copying a Smarty 2 template to a Smarty 3 template (most of them are easily fixed).
Personalization used in webforms and personalization in follow-up actions will still use the Smarty 2 engine, even if they are affiliated with a Smarty 3 document or template.
If you are not sure about the smarty version used in your template or document, you can find out by (temporarily) placing the code {$smarty.version} in your document. This will output the smarty version used.

Advantages of smarty 3

Auto escaping curly braces {}

Smarty insignia, such as {} surrounded by trailing spaces are no longer recognized as Smarty tags. For instance { abc } will be ignored and treated like a normal accolade, as opposed to {abc} which will still be treated as a Smarty variable. In templates rendered with Smarty 3, it is no longer necessary to use {ldelim} and {rdelim} to escape the curly braces.

Creating variables is done quicker and easier

Using Smarty 2 you can capture something in a variable as follows:

{capture assign="namevar"}This is a var{/capture}

In smarty 3 the same is accomplished with less spending of digital ink

{$namevar="This is a var"}

Both methods will output the same value: "This is a var".

Functions

Not new in Smarty 3, but since the upgrade made available in the software are functions. Functions are particularly useful when the same code is used and executed within the template several times. Writing a function allows you write a procedure and use it multiple times, instead of having to copy it to the appropriate locations. Using functions makes your template more manageable.

You can find more about these functions in the Smarty Documentation or in our article on personalization functions

The syntax is more strict

Adding multiple parameters to a Smarty 3 function requires you to surround the parameter with quotes, especially when spaces or colons are used in the pararmeter. Example:

[text name="paragraph 1"]

{in_miniselection miniselection="database:myCollection:myMiniSelection"}