Ok, I did some more tinkering and added a public method that can be used from within php templates as well. Now, to add any extra context, you can use a php template file and let the TemplateLoader take care of finding the right template, again, like the WP template hierarchy:

// author.php
$context = array();
$context['author'] = new TimberUser( get_the_author_meta( 'ID' ) );
$context['title'] = 'Author Archives: ' . $context['author']->name();

TimberTemplateLoader::load_template( $context );

Makes for quite elegant template loading! The API needs some thought - maybe this should be merged with TimberView? (#261) It could perhaps be used when TimberView::render or TimberView::compile are called without arguments.

Sorry, when I deleted the dev branch, GitHub tried to close this. Re-opened and going through now.....

Hi @jarednova,

We have left this one hanging for much too long now! I have rebased template-autoloader on master and made sure everything is still working. All unit tests are still passing and all my Timber projects are still working as they should, so this is still good to go as far as I'm concerned.

It's been a while, so here is a recap of what's included in this PR:

• Template loader to automatically load the correct of twig template with default context according to template hierarchy (making php templates optional)
• Template autoloader is disabled by default, can be enabled by setting Timber::$twig_template_hierarchy = true;
• WooCommerce compatibility, without header.php / footer.php hack
• Manual render call for php templates with autoloader possible with simplified syntax: Timber::render( $context ); (no need to pass in the $filenames paramter)
• Themes can include a context.php file, which will be used to load default theme context. The $context array is directly available in context.php.

At the time, I made an opinionated started theme for Timber that relied heavily on the template autoloader. I didn't push it to GitHub then because I figured I'd wait for this to be merged into master. I spent some time reviving it, and I think it's also pretty powerful stuff. If anything, it's a good demo of what the template autoloader can do. I finally pushed it to GitHub just now: https://github.com/mgmartel/timber-regions

I used it to build a proof-of-concept Foundation theme based on Timber, which I'll also push some time this week.

What are your thoughts about bringing this to master?

Mike

@jarednova is this door shut now? what triggered the close?

That was not intentional. I cleaned-up some stale branches this AM, but this one says it's still open. Hmm......

Hi @jarednova,

Accidental close again? Just finished another Timber site using the template loader (here) and still convinced that this is the way to go for theme development with Timber. The theme is mostly twig templates, as opposed to a mess of PHP files.

I just added some more commits to this branch:

• Added support for page templates (this needs a PHP counterpart to show up in the page template selector, but it doesn't have to contain any code)
• WP 4.3 introduced singular.php, this now has singular.twig support

Do you have any plans of merging this into master? If so, I'll rebase again!

Cheers,
Mike