{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.