What are the advantages of using a render function and passing data arrays to templates in PHP development, as suggested in the forum thread?

When developing in PHP, using a render function to pass data arrays to templates can help separate the logic from the presentation layer, making the code more organized and maintainable. By passing data arrays to templates, you can easily populate the template with dynamic content without mixing PHP code with HTML markup. This approach also allows for reusability of templates across different pages or sections of a website.

// Render function to pass data arrays to templates
function renderTemplate($template, $data) {
    extract($data);
    ob_start();
    include $template;
    return ob_get_clean();
}

// Example data array
$data = [
    'title' => 'Welcome to our website',
    'content' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.'
];

// Example usage of the render function
$template = 'template.php';
echo renderTemplate($template, $data);