3
If the Smarty variable is assigned, you should be able to use it.
I am not a Smarty guru, so I used Google and searched for "
using smarty variable in php", and I got few links that I think, should help you:
http://www.saurus.info/exchanging-variables-between-templates-and-php/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8828210/using-smarty-variable-within-php-tags
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?651886-Passing-a-SMARTY-variable-into-php-code
http://dustyreagan.com/how-to-reference-smarty-variables-inside-php-tags/
So based on the above, this is the right way to do it:
http://www.smarty.net/docsv2/en/api.get.template.vars.tpl
For example, in the fbcomment module, it is used like this:
$sitename=$xoopsTpl -> get_template_vars( 'xoops_sitename' );
I hope, it helps!