Latte - call function in TPL (ideally with parameter) instead of variable

I decided to rewrite an older website that I made years ago and use templating system. I decided to use Latte, as its generating PHP files, which makes it really fast compared to systems that parse tpl every time. But I was not able to figure out, how to call a function with latte and get its result.

I am used to our custom company TPL system which can call any function and even pass parameters to it just by calling {function_name.param} or use function constants with {function::param}.

Is something like this possible purely in Latte (I am not using Nette or any other framework)? I do not want to call every single function in PHP and add it to array of parameters that TPL has to its disposal. That just makes it slower (yep I know I could use ifs in there and then ifs in TPL, but that's also an useless code duplication).

I want it to be able to call a function within class that's rendering the TPL (or its parent classes OFC) and return its output when I need it (if I even do need it), so I can avoid unnecessary calls to functions when initializing parameters for TPL parsing.

I tried to google quite a lot, but I didn't find anything useful.

I should also mention, that I am not going to use any framework at all, except Latte with Tracy and Tester for automatic testing. I do not want to use Nette or Symfony 2 etc. as the site is not that big and using whole framework would just make it even more complicated than it needs to be.

Thanks.

Ps.: Could somebody create tag for Latte?

Solution

You can simply call any php function this way:

{? echo 'hello'}

or in newer versions of Latte:

{php echo 'hello'}

Also, you can pass instances of Nette\Utils\Html (small lib separated from framework, full of great tools even for small apps) which will be directly rendered.

Or if you want to use own class rendering output directly, simply implement __toString() function using IHtmlString interface:

class MyOwnClassRenderableByLatte implements \Latte\Runtime\IHtmlString
{
    function __toString()
    {
        return 'Hi';
    }
}

Template sample including your later questions:

{php
    // You can instantiate needed classes in one synoptical block
    // in the head of template file or reather instantiate them
    // outside of template and pass them as template variables
    $a = new ClassA();
    $b = new ClassB();
}

<div>{$a->someFunction()}</div>
<div>
    {* Or you can instantiate class inplace this way,
       but I wouldn't recommend it. BTW: This is Latte comment.
    *}
    {php (new ClassC())->otherFunction()}
</div>