For those that might have heard of traits (made available in newer versions of PHP, 5.4+) but haven't seen much of a practical application, this new post from Matthew Setter could help.

Here’s the situation which prompted the use of them, in a nutshell. I had a custom view helper which performed some rather elementary date & time formatting, based purely on US standards. When I first wrote the ViewHelper, I wasn’t aware of any other use case I’d have for it. So it made sense for it to be self-contained. Such is life however, as later in development the need did arise to do more date/time formatting. But this time, far removed from the view layer in a model. [...] So I weighed up my options and chose to go with Traits. I’ll be honest, there was the new & cool factor to them as well – as well as an irresistible sense of simplicity in them.

He shares the actual trait code he implemented, making two simple methods - one for formatting date and another for formatting the time - for his views to use. He also includes examples of it in use. He also sought some feedback