In this new post, Chris Hartjes takes a look at something that is one of the banes of most programmers' existence - documentation. In it he wonders what should really be considered documentation and the importance of it.

As a committed user of open source technologies, the difference between me using something and not using something is the documentation. Is there documentation for it? Is it easy to find? Does it answer my questions? Is there someone I can call an idiot if I disagree with the level of documentation? These are all very important questions.

He uses the illustration of the documentation of the CakePHP framework that's helpful, but only really after you learn how to use the framework in the first place. He mentions people on both sides of the fence - those that love the framework and love the documentation and those that moved on to something simpler because they just couldn't get it.

He also mentions the variety of sources that can provide "documentation" for the framework when you're getting a bit stuck - everything from blogs to The Bakery to a different sort of documentation, unit test.

On the Developer Tutorials blog, there's a recent example of how to validate a common task of many signup forms - if the email sent is actually received.

For any web developer that's ever had to build a signup routine, email is the necessary evil that takes pride of place among hated activities. Sure, a simple call to the language's mail library will send a message through, but the moment the boss wants a HTML email, or users need attachments, everything starts to get tricky.

They try to solve the mail return issue (it tells if the message has gone to the queue, not been delivered) with a little testing and Fakemail. The software looks for emails based on the configuration given and pulls them out to a local directory. Your script can then look here and check the validity of the message before its sent.

This even allows for integration with things like Phing, SimpleTest and Selenium.

Brian DeShong has posted some of his "food for thought" on the development process that's behind the scenes of different PHP applications.

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking on development processes and quality, specifically for large-scale, professional PHP-based projects. [...] Generally speaking, my perception is that software development shops that really care about and emphasize quality have processes that consist of things such as writing use cases, unit testing and continuous integration.

He knows how he feels about all of this, be he wants to hear back from the community. How far does quality assurance go in your group? What kind of time/funding does this involve? Leave him a comment and let him know...

Akash Mehta has posted a look at unit testing for PHP applications with the SimpleTest tool in a new post to the Developer Tutorials blog.

We recently looked at front-end testing of web applications with Selenium. Today, we'll take another approach to testing your PHP applications: backend unit testing for your actual PHP code. As part of our posts on test driven development, here's a quick intro to using SimpleTest to test your PHP applications.

He introduces the SimpleTest software and shows what a sample test might look like for a simple math question (testing to see if the result of the addition is correct). He also points out a good tutorial on the SimpleTest website to help you get started.

According to this new post to the Symfony blog, fans of the framework have a new reason to be happy - the latest version, 1.1, has officially been released.

As you may know, we have been working for a very long time on the next stable version of symfony. Now the day has come to celebrate the immediate availability of the long awaited 1.1 stable release of the symfony framework!

Just some of the new features include the framework's new architecture, its brand new YAML parser, the bundling of Propel as a plugin and the addition of over 8,500 functional tests to ensure the solid structure of the framework stands.

You can either update/install this latest version with the pear command line functionality or download the package directly from the site.

On the Debuggable blog today, Tim Koschutki shows how you can run just the tests you want on your CakePHP application without having to worry about sorting their results out manually.

Most of us familiar with unit testing with CakePHP and SimpleTest know that SimpleTest always executes all methods starting with the string "test". This can be problematic sometimes. At this point you have two options: create a new testcase, put an "x" before every other test name or use the following tip.

His tip puts another layer on top of the usual testing and uses the getTests method to define with of the tests need to be run. If it's defined, SimpleTest will only execute those.

Sebastian Bergmann has a new post today about a feature of the PHPUnit unit testing tool that has the possibility of breaking when objects are introduced - backing up the globals.

It is hard to test code that uses singletons. The same is true for code that uses global variables. Typically, the code you want to test is coupled strongly with a global variable and you cannot control its creation. An additional problem is the fact that one test's change to a global variable might break another test.

You can disable the backup option if you'd like by setting the $backupGlobals option in your test to false. This lets PHPUnit know that you want to leave the globals (and superglobals) alone during the run.

On the PHP in Action blog, there's a new post about a method for testing a controller as a part of a Zend Framework application with its own view helpers.

I came across a Zend Framework (ZF) example I wanted to refactor. You really have to have unit test coverage to refactor effectively, and since there were no tests, I started trying to find out how to test it. There didn't seem to be a wealth of information available on the web, so I've tried to figure it out by myself.

He walks through the testing process he followed - making some new default objects (for SimpleTest) and, using the flash messenger view helper, makes some mock classes to simulate sending the flash messages in an application.

According to a new post on the tilllate blog today, "unit testing makes coding more fun":

"Unit testing is a test that validates that individual units of source code are working properly", that's what Wikipedia says about unit testing. That's general knowledge.

But what motivates me even more than the increased software quality is that it saves me development time. This sounds odd as you might believe that TDD means writing more code.

A real-life example is included (an internal invoicing system) with the steps they'd follow to test it normally via the browser (slow) or through the automated tests (fast!)

In a new post today, Michael Kimsal walks through the procoess he followed to try and get the most optimized testing environment he could around a WordPress installation he already has set up.

I've recently been working on a project trying to take an existing customized wordpress site and create automated integration tests around parts of it. I'm using phpUnderControl, phpUnit, Selenium RC, Firefox, Xvfb (virtual frame buffer) and...well, I think that's it.

He mentions the two issues he came across, both with the WordPress software (the "siteurl" setting and the pathing for the templates). He recommends that application code be portable to avoid problems like these. Applications that can be dropped in anywhere and "just work" can help not only make life easier for the installer but also for the tester.