[php] What are .tpl files? PHP, web design

Someone wants me to redesign a site run in PHP (VideoCMS). But when I asked him to send me the source he has given me *.tpl files instead of *.php. There is some code inside them:

{include file='header.tpl' p="article"}

<br />
<table width="886" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
  <tr>
    <td width="150" valign="top">
    <div id="reg_box">
    <h3 class="captions">{$lang.articles}</h3>
        <div id="list_cats">
        <ul>
            {$article_categories}
        </ul>
        </div>
    </div>
    <br />
    <div id="reg_box">
    <h3 class="captions">{$lang.members}</h3>
    {if $logged_in == '1'}
    {include file='loggedin_body.tpl'}
    {else}
    {include file='login_body.tpl'}
    {/if}

or

{include file='header.tpl' p="index"}

{php} $_SESSION['isFair'] = "Yes"; {/php}

What's the interpreter of the code? How can I redesign this site?

Other possibilities for .tpl: HTML::SimpleTemplate, example:

Hello $name

, and Template Toolkit, example:

Hello [% world %]!

In this specific case it is Smarty, but it could also be Jinja2 templates. They usually also have a .tpl extension.

Number 3 hit on Google for "tpl file" (even though it's one of those annoying "Fix TPL errors now", "Scan TPL files with our virus scanner", sell-you-everything-under-the-sun-with-flashy-ugly-ads-when-all-you-wanted-was-the-file-description sites) is:

Used by PHP web development and PHP web applications as a template file. Mostly used by Smarty template engine. Template is a common text file (like .html file) and contains user defined variables that are replaced by user defined output content when PHP web application parsing a template file.

.tpl is the extension for Smarty files. It means "template".

Tip: if you are using NetBeans and you want a correct syntax highlighting for those files:

• Go to menu Options ? Tools
• Under Miscellaneous, select the Files tab
• Click new file extension, enter tpl.
• In Associated File Type (MIME), select HTML Files (text/html)
• Click OK

.tpl shows there is a smarty! Smarty is a template language to split out PHP code from HTML code. Which gives us to the ability to do design stuff on a page which has not included PHP code.

Templates. I think that is Smarty syntax.

You have to learn Smarty syntax. That's a template system.

Those look like Smarty templates. There should be some additional PHP scripts which actually instantiate the Smarty engine and give it the data it can use for the replaceable elements.

The files are using some sort of template engine in which curly braces indicate variables being generated by that templating engine, the files creating such variables must be present elsewhere with the more or less same name as the tpl file name. Here are some of templates engine mostly used.

Smarty

Savant

Tinybutstrong

etc

With smarty being widely used.