Is there a pretty print for PHP?

Answer 1

The best I found yet is this:

echo "<pre>";
print_r($arr);
echo "</pre>";

And if you want it more detailed:

echo "<pre>";
var_dump($arr);
echo "</pre>";

Adding a <pre> HTML tag in a web development environment will respect the newlines \n of the print function correctly, without having to add some html <br>

Answer 2

How about print_r?

http://www.php.net/print_r

Answer 3

Best way to do this is

echo "<pre>".print_r($array,true)."</pre>";

Example:

$array=array("foo"=>"999","bar"=>"888","poo"=>array("x"=>"111","y"=>"222","z"=>"333"));
echo "<pre>".print_r($array,true)."</pre>";

Result:

Array
(
    [foo] => 999
    [bar] => 888
    [poo] => Array
        (
            [x] => 111
            [y] => 222
            [z] => 333
        )
)

Read more about print_r.

About the second parameter of print_r "true" from the documentation:

When this parameter is set to TRUE, print_r() will return the information rather than print it.

Answer 4

This function works pretty well so long as you set header('Content-type: text/plain'); before outputting the return string

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php#80339

<?php
// Pretty print some JSON
function json_format($json)
{
    $tab = "  ";
    $new_json = "";
    $indent_level = 0;
    $in_string = false;

    $json_obj = json_decode($json);

    if($json_obj === false)
        return false;

    $json = json_encode($json_obj);
    $len = strlen($json);

    for($c = 0; $c < $len; $c++)
    {
        $char = $json[$c];
        switch($char)
        {
            case '{':
            case '[':
                if(!$in_string)
                {
                    $new_json .= $char . "\n" . str_repeat($tab, $indent_level+1);
                    $indent_level++;
                }
                else
                {
                    $new_json .= $char;
                }
                break;
            case '}':
            case ']':
                if(!$in_string)
                {
                    $indent_level--;
                    $new_json .= "\n" . str_repeat($tab, $indent_level) . $char;
                }
                else
                {
                    $new_json .= $char;
                }
                break;
            case ',':
                if(!$in_string)
                {
                    $new_json .= ",\n" . str_repeat($tab, $indent_level);
                }
                else
                {
                    $new_json .= $char;
                }
                break;
            case ':':
                if(!$in_string)
                {
                    $new_json .= ": ";
                }
                else
                {
                    $new_json .= $char;
                }
                break;
            case '"':
                if($c > 0 && $json[$c-1] != '\\')
                {
                    $in_string = !$in_string;
                }
            default:
                $new_json .= $char;
                break;                   
        }
    }

    return $new_json;
}
?>

Answer 5

If you want to use the result in further functions, you can get a valid PHP expression as a string using var_export:

$something = array(1,2,3);
$some_string = var_export($something, true);

For a lot of the things people are doing in their questions, I'm hoping they've dedicated a function and aren't copy pasting the extra logging around. var_export achieves a similar output to var_dump in these situations.

Answer 6

a one-liner that will give you the rough equivalent of "viewing source" to see array contents:

assumes php 4.3.0+:

echo nl2br(str_replace(' ', ' ', print_r($_SERVER, true)));