I've been working some with jQuery and Ruby lately, as you might know they both have very neat fluent interfaces for writing short and easily understandable code. Especially Ruby's array and string handling should be something that can be done in PHP so I started googling. [...] It's probably very possible that what I'm looking for is already part of some PHP framework or such but I didn't want to spend more time looking than being productive.

Based on some Ruby examples, he defines a set of functions that can be use to create these fluent interfaces to the common PHP variable types (contained in a class for easy use). The entire source can be downloded here.

In this article, I introduce a TDD related practice called Behaviour-Driven Development which has been gathering attention for over a year and gaining converts (like me!).

He briefly covers what BDD is and how it can be used to solidify code against issues that might come up down the road (and how it compares to test-driven development). Some sample code/tests are included to give you a better idea of how it all fits together - a set of scenarios for any given "story". True to the title, Padraic writes his tests around the construction of a Klingon Bird of Prey ship.