New in Latte 2.7: types everywhere and batch

Type system

Type system is a key thing for robust application development. To know what data or object type each variable is allows

• IDE to correctly autocomplete
• static analysis to detect errors

Both things significantly increase the quality and convenience of development. This topic deserves a separate article in which you will learn all the essentials: how to declare types, how to simplify your work and how to enable autocompletion in IDE.

Filter |batch

A new feature is the filter |batch, which simplifies the listing of linear data into a table:

{var $items = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']}
<table>
{foreach ($items|batch:3,'No item') as $row}
    <tr>
        {foreach $row as $column}
            <td>{$column}</td>
        {/foreach}
    </tr>
{/foreach}
</table>

generates:

<table>
    <tr>
        <td>a</td>
        <td>b</td>
        <td>c</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>d</td>
        <td>e</td>
        <td>f</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>g</td>
        <td>No item</td>
        <td>No item</td>
    </tr>
</table>

The first parameter is the number of columns and the second, optional, additional value to fill the last row.

And briefly

• Optional chaining can now also be used for expressions like $obj->$var? and $obj::$var?
• Using spaceless as n:attribute preserves whitespace before and after element <div n:spaceless>
• All ILoader, IHtmlString, ISnipperDriver, IMacro interfaces can now be written without the I prefix. It is another step in the gradual elimination of prefixes throughout the framework.