assignByRef is gone, long live... who?

[SinusPi]

I used to abuse the assignByRef function to create a way for templates to "talk back" to the calling code, not merely returning a block of rendered HTML, but a few variable values, too - like giving the templates a way to return a tuple instead of a plain string, if they were functions.
So with assignByRef gone in new Smarty versions, what would be the best approach to let templates return "something more"?
I'm almost set on writing some simple plugin that would store values "set" by the template, but I wonder if there's a better idea.

[wisskid]

Hi @SinusPi! Please see https://smarty-php.github.io/smarty/stable/designers/language-builtin-functions/language-function-assign/#examples for some examples on how to use $smarty->getTemplateVars() to read variables set in templates (e.g. using {assign}).

[SinusPi]

So, to answer my own question more directly, using $t->assign("bucket",$BUCKET); $t->fetch(); /* {$BUCKET.foo="bar"} */ $BUCKET=getTemplateVars('bucket'); it's possible to emulate the old $t->assignByRef("bucket",$BUCKET); $t->fetch(); behaviour, am I correct?

[wisskid]

Correct! 👍

[SinusPi]

It helps - somewhat. But, what would I do in a scenario when I no longer have access to $t after it's displayed, because it's part of a buffered include('i_display_a_template.php'); call? With refs, assigned variables would still be updated. Would abusing an output-type plugin work in this case, doing the getTemplateVars and exporting to globals/wherever?

[wisskid]

Yes, I guess that would be possible.

[ssigwart]

@SinusPi, I submitted #986 to bring back support for assignByRef. You could create a fork and see if that works for you.