Guide 02 · Developer docs

Template languages: Smarty and Twig

Core dna renders server-side sites with Smarty or with Twig, one engine per site, and treats the two as peers. This guide is the one place both are documented: what they share, each engine's language and the platform's additions and limits, the two side by side, and translation.

L1–L2

Unit 02 of 05 5 pages

Smarty

Updated 23/10/2026 01:48

The reference for Smarty sites: the language as you write it on Core dna, inheritance and includes, the tags and modifiers the platform adds, and the security policy that decides which PHP a template may call.

This unit is written so that day-to-day work on a Smarty site never needs the upstream manual. It assumes The shared model: how a template is found and chosen, and what it receives.

Begin with Smarty in Core dna, which says what the platform changes about stock Smarty and where errors show. Smarty syntax covers output, modifiers, assignment and scope, loops, and the ternary that needs parentheses; Smarty inheritance, includes and the template context covers base templates, partials and state that crosses templates. What the platform adds to Smarty is the reference for the platform's own tags and modifiers, and The template security policy lists every PHP function a template may call, which is the page to open when a template fails with “not allowed by security setting”. Twig sites have the same set of pages in the next unit.

In this unit

Read in order

01 Smarty in Core dna Core dna runs Smarty 4.4 with braces as delimiters, a security policy that cannot be switched off, a handful of plugins of its own, and no automatic escaping. How the platform configures it, how to check a site's delimiters, why records are objects, and where errors and debug output show. 02 Smarty syntax: output, assignment and control flow The Smarty you write every day on Core dna, checked against the version the platform runs: printing values and chaining modifiers, assigning and the scope rules that bite, conditions and loops with their loop properties, the ternary that needs parentheses, and quoting and escaping inside expressions. 03 Smarty inheritance, includes and the template context How Smarty templates are composed on Core dna: a base template and the blocks a child fills, with append, prepend and hide; includes with parameters and their scope; the platform's _templateContext for state that crosses templates, such as a heading level; and what {strip} does to markup. 04 What the platform adds to Smarty Core dna registers its own tags and modifiers on top of stock Smarty: four translation forms, |format for dates, {json}, {debug_vars}, {error}, and four modifiers. What each one takes, what it prints, the input that makes it fail, and when to reach for it. 05 The template security policy Every Smarty template on Core dna compiles under a policy the site cannot change: 98 callable PHP functions, seven PHP functions usable as modifiers, no super-globals, and files only from the template folders. Why it exists, the complete lists, the errors it produces, and what to use for what it refuses.