How do I print out the contents of an object in Rails for easy debugging?

Question

I think I\'m trying to get the PHP equivalent of print_r() (print human-readable); at present the raw output is:

ActiveRecord::Relation:0x10355d         


        

Answer 1

In Rails you can print the result in the View by using the debug' Helper ActionView::Helpers::DebugHelper

#app/view/controllers/post_controller.rb
def index
 @posts = Post.all
end

#app/view/posts/index.html.erb
<%= debug(@posts) %>

#start your server
rails -s

results (in browser)

- !ruby/object:Post
  raw_attributes:
    id: 2
    title: My Second Post
    body: Welcome!  This is another example post
    published_at: '2015-10-19 23:00:43.469520'
    created_at: '2015-10-20 00:00:43.470739'
    updated_at: '2015-10-20 00:00:43.470739'
  attributes: !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::AttributeSet
    attributes: !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::LazyAttributeHash
      types: &5
        id: &2 !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::Type::Integer
          precision: 
          scale: 
          limit: 
          range: !ruby/range
            begin: -2147483648
            end: 2147483648
            excl: true
        title: &3 !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::Type::String
          precision: 
          scale: 
          limit: 
        body: &4 !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::Type::Text
          precision: 
          scale: 
          limit: 
        published_at: !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::AttributeMethods::TimeZoneConversion::TimeZoneConverter
          subtype: &1 !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::Type::DateTime
            precision: 
            scale: 
            limit: 
        created_at: !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::AttributeMethods::TimeZoneConversion::TimeZoneConverter
          subtype: *1
        updated_at: !ruby/object:ActiveRecord::AttributeMethods::TimeZoneConversion::TimeZoneConverter
          subtype: *1