How to get nice formatting in the Rails console

Question

I want to get something like this to look nice:

>> ProductColor.all
=> [#, #, #, #]

This doesn't work:

>> ProductColor.all.inspect
=> "[#, #, #, #]"

And neither does this:

>> ProductColor.all.to_yaml
=> "--- 
- !ruby/object:ProductColor 
  attributes: 
    name: White
    created_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44
    updated_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44
    id: "1"
    internal_name: White
  attributes_cache: {}

- !ruby/object:ProductColor 
  attributes: 
    name: Ivory
    created_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44
    updated_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44
    id: "2"
    internal_name: Ivory
  attributes_cache: {}

- !ruby/object:ProductColor 
  attributes: 
    name: Blue
    created_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44
    updated_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44
    id: "3"
    internal_name: Light Blue
  attributes_cache: {}

- !ruby/object:ProductColor 
  attributes: 
    name: Green
    created_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44
    updated_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44
    id: "4"
    internal_name: Green
  attributes_cache: {}

"

Thoughts?

user_148722 · Answer

The y method is a handy way to get some pretty YAML output.

y ProductColor.all

Assuming you are in script/console

As jordanpg commented, this answer is outdated. For Rails 3.2+ you need to execute the following code before you can get the y method to work:

YAML::ENGINE.yamler = 'syck'

From ruby-docs

In older Ruby versions, ie. <= 1.9, Syck is still provided, however it was completely removed with the release of Ruby 2.0.0.

For rails 4/ruby 2 you could use just

puts object.to_yaml

user_83510 · Answer

You should try hirb. It's a gem made to to pretty format objects in the ruby console. Your script/console session would look like this:

>> require 'hirb'
=> true
>> Hirb.enable
=> true
>> ProductColor.first
+----+-------+---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| id | name  | internal_name | created_at          | updated_at          |
+----+-------+---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| 1  | White | White         | 2009-06-10 04:02:44 | 2009-06-10 04:02:44 |
+----+-------+---------------+---------------------+---------------------+
1 row in set
=> true

You can learn more about hirb at its homepage.

user_4112224 · Answer

I think this solution is the most accurate one. You should try this:

puts JSON.pretty_generate Entry.all.map(&:attributes)

This will give you a super nice output compare to YAML format:

[
  {
    "id": 44,
    "team_id": null,
    "member_id": 1000000,
    "match_id": 1,
    "created_at": "2019-04-09 15:53:14 +0900",
    "updated_at": "2019-04-09 15:53:14 +0900"
  },
  {
    "id": 45,
    "team_id": null,
    "member_id": 1000001,
    "match_id": 1,
    "created_at": "2019-04-09 15:53:36 +0900",
    "updated_at": "2019-04-09 15:53:36 +0900"
  },
  {
    "id": 46,
    "team_id": null,
    "member_id": 1000003,
    "match_id": 1,
    "created_at": "2019-04-09 15:56:40 +0900",
    "updated_at": "2019-04-09 15:56:40 +0900"
  },
  {
    "id": 47,
    "team_id": null,
    "member_id": 1000004,
    "match_id": 1,
    "created_at": "2019-04-09 15:56:48 +0900",
    "updated_at": "2019-04-09 15:56:48 +0900"
  }
]

user_149392 · Answer

You might want to define ProductColor's inspect method to return something that you find nice. For example:

def inspect
  "<#{id} - #{name} (#{internal_name})>"
end

After which the result of ProductColor.all will display as something like [<1 - White (White)>, ...]. Of course you should adjust the inspect method to your needs, so that it displays all the information you need in a style that you like.

Edit: also if the issue was the lack of line breaks in the output, you might try

require 'pp'
pp ProductColor.all

which should insert linebreaks where appropriate

How to get nice formatting in the Rails console

12 Answers