How to get nice formatting in the Rails console - ruby-on-rails

Question

I want to get something like this to look nice:
>> ProductColor.all
=> [#<ProductColor id: 1, name: "White", internal_name: "White", created_at: "2009-06-10 04:02:44", updated_at: "2009-06-10 04:02:44">, #<ProductColor id: 2, name: "Ivory", internal_name: "Ivory", created_at: "2009-06-10 04:02:44", updated_at: "2009-06-10 04:02:44">, #<ProductColor id: 3, name: "Blue", internal_name: "Light Blue", created_at: "2009-06-10 04:02:44", updated_at: "2009-06-10 04:02:44">, #<ProductColor id: 4, name: "Green", internal_name: "Green", created_at: "2009-06-10 04:02:44", updated_at: "2009-06-10 04:02:44">]
This doesn't work:
>> ProductColor.all.inspect
=> "[#<ProductColor id: 1, name: \"White\", internal_name: \"White\", created_at: \"2009-06-10 04:02:44\", updated_at: \"2009-06-10 04:02:44\">, #<ProductColor id: 2, name: \"Ivory\", internal_name: \"Ivory\", created_at: \"2009-06-10 04:02:44\", updated_at: \"2009-06-10 04:02:44\">, #<ProductColor id: 3, name: \"Blue\", internal_name: \"Light Blue\", created_at: \"2009-06-10 04:02:44\", updated_at: \"2009-06-10 04:02:44\">, #<ProductColor id: 4, name: \"Green\", internal_name: \"Green\", created_at: \"2009-06-10 04:02:44\", updated_at: \"2009-06-10 04:02:44\">]"
And neither does this:
>> ProductColor.all.to_yaml
=> "--- \n- !ruby/object:ProductColor \n attributes: \n name: White\n created_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44\n updated_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44\n id: \"1\"\n internal_name: White\n attributes_cache: {}\n\n- !ruby/object:ProductColor \n attributes: \n name: Ivory\n created_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44\n updated_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44\n id: \"2\"\n internal_name: Ivory\n attributes_cache: {}\n\n- !ruby/object:ProductColor \n attributes: \n name: Blue\n created_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44\n updated_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44\n id: \"3\"\n internal_name: Light Blue\n attributes_cache: {}\n\n- !ruby/object:ProductColor \n attributes: \n name: Green\n created_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44\n updated_at: 2009-06-10 04:02:44\n id: \"4\"\n internal_name: Green\n attributes_cache: {}\n\n"
Thoughts?

Answer 1

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As jordanpg commented, this answer is outdated.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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Awesome print is nice too if you want an object indented. Something like:
$ rails console
rails> require "awesome_print"
rails> ap Account.all(:limit => 2)
[
[0] #<Account:0x1033220b8> {
:id => 1,
:user_id => 5,
:assigned_to => 7,
:name => "Hayes-DuBuque",
:access => "Public",
:website => "http://www.hayesdubuque.com",
:toll_free_phone => "1-800-932-6571",
:phone => "[phone]",
:fax => "[phone]",
:deleted_at => nil,
:created_at => Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:46:10 UTC +00:00,
:updated_at => Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:33:10 UTC +00:00,
:email => "info#hayesdubuque.com",
:background_info => nil
},
[1] #<Account:0x103321ff0> {
:id => 2,
:user_id => 4,
:assigned_to => 4,
:name => "Ziemann-Streich",
:access => "Public",
:website => "http://www.ziemannstreich.com",
:toll_free_phone => "1-800-871-0619",
:phone => "[phone]",
:fax => "[phone]",
:deleted_at => nil,
:created_at => Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:32:10 UTC +00:00,
:updated_at => Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:05:01 UTC +00:00,
:email => "info#ziemannstreich.com",
:background_info => nil
}
]
To integrate it by default with your irb/rails/pry console, add to your ~/.irbrc or ~/.pryrc file:
require "awesome_print"
AwesomePrint.irb! # just in .irbrc
AwesomePrint.pry! # just in .pryrc

Answer 4

>> puts ProductColor.all.to_yaml
Simply works fine!
Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4830096

Answer 5

May also be noted that you can use:
j ProductColor.all.inspect
to output in Json format rather than Yaml

Answer 6

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"
}
]

Answer 7

Hi you can also try this in your script/console if
>> y ProductColor.all
not working for you.
Try this:
>> require 'yaml'
>> YAML::ENGINE.yamler = 'syck'
then
>> y ProductColor.all

Answer 8

I had some troubles making it work so I'll add my two cents to awesome_print
add this to your Gemfile, preferably in :development
gem 'awesome_print', require: 'ap'
then in
rails console
you can do
> ap Model.all
That's it. However you can also add
require "awesome_print"
AwesomePrint.irb!
to your ~/.irbrc, this way awesome_print will be required anytime you open the console and you can simply do
Model.all
without the need of typing ap

Answer 9

You may also try the following for a group of objects
Object.all.map(&:attributes).to_yaml
This will give you much nicer output, like
---
id: 1
type: College
name: University of Texas
---
id: 2
type: College
name: University of California
Calling to_yaml on attributes rather than the object itself saves you from viewing the full contents of the object in the output
Or puts Object.last.attributes.to_yaml for a single object
Shorthand is also available: y Object.last.attributes

Answer 10

Use irbtools gem.
It will automatically format the the console output plus you'll get tons of great features.

Answer 11

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

Answer 12

To add to Alter Lago's suggestion for using AwesomePrint,
If you can't/shouldn't/don't want to add the awesome_print gem to your project's Gemfile, do this:
gem install awesome_print
Edit ~/.irb.rc and add this:
$LOAD_PATH << '/Users/your-user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/awesome_print-1.1.0/lib'
require 'awesome_print'
(Making sure the path and version are correct, of course)