yii2-bootstrap/docs/guide/template.md

Using template engines

By default Yii uses PHP as template language but you can configure it to be able to render templates with special engines such as Twig or Smarty.

The component responsible for rendering a view is called view. You can add a custom template engines as follows:

array(
	'components' => array(
		'view' => array(
			'class' => 'yii\base\View',
			'renderers' => array(
				'tpl' => array(
					'class' => 'yii\renderers\SmartyViewRenderer',
				),
				'twig' => array(
					'class' => 'yii\renderers\TwigViewRenderer',
					'twigPath' => '@app/vendors/Twig',
				),
				// ...
			),
		),
	),
)

Note that Smarty and Twig are not bundled with Yii and you have to download and unpack these yourself and then specify twigPath and smartyPath respectively.

Twig

In order to use Twig you need to put you templates in files with extension .twig (or another one if configured differently). Also you need to specify this extension explicitly when calling $this->render() or $this->renderPartial() from your controller:

echo $this->render('renderer.twig', array('username' => 'Alex'));

Additional functions

Additionally to regular Twig syntax the following is available in Yii:

<a href="{{ path('blog/view', {'alias' : post.alias}) }}">{{ post.title }}</a>

path function calls Html::url() internally.

Additional variables

• app = \Yii::$app
• this = current View object

Smarty

In order to use Smarty you need to put you templates in files with extension .tpl (or another one if configured differently). Also you need to specify this extension explicitly when calling $this->render() or $this->renderPartial() from your controller:

echo $this->render('renderer.tpl', array('username' => 'Alex'));

Additional functions

Additionally to regular Smarty syntax the following is available in Yii:

<a href="{path route='blog/view' alias=$post.alias}">{$post.title}</a>

path function calls Html::url() internally.

Additional variables

• $app = \Yii::$app
• $this = current View object