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

Question

I generally first try .inspect, if that doesn't give me what I want, I'll switch to .to_yaml.

class User
  attr_accessor :name, :age
end

user = User.new
user.name = "John Smith"
user.age = 30

puts user.inspect
#=> #<User:0x423270c @name="John Smith", @age=30>
puts user.to_yaml
#=> --- !ruby/object:User
#=> age: 30
#=> name: John Smith

Hope that helps.

define the to_s method in your model. For example

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  def to_s
    "Name:#{self.name} Age:#{self.age} Weight: #{self.weight}"
  end
end

Then when you go to print it with #puts it will display that string with those variables.

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

I'm using the awesome_print gem

So you just have to type :

ap @var