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

.inspect is what you're looking for, it's way easier IMO than .to_yaml!

user = User.new
user.name = "will"
user.email = "will@example.com"

user.inspect
#<name: "will", email: "will@example.com">

Answer 2

inspect is great but sometimes not good enough. E.g. BigDecimal prints like this: #<BigDecimal:7ff49f5478b0,'0.1E2',9(18)>.

To have full control over what's printed you could redefine to_s or inspect methods. Or create your own one to not confuse future devs too much.

  class Something < ApplicationRecord

    def to_s
      attributes.map{ |k, v| { k => v.to_s } }.inject(:merge)
    end

  end

This will apply a method (i.e. to_s) to all attributes. This example will get rid of the ugly BigDecimals.

You can also redefine a handful of attributes only:

  def to_s
    attributes.merge({ my_attribute: my_attribute.to_s })
  end

You can also create a mix of the two or somehow add associations.