How to get nice formatting in the Rails console

Question

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As jordanpg commented, this answer is outdated.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

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.

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 => "(111)549-5002",
                    :fax => "(349)415-2266",
             :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 => "[email protected]",
        :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 => "(042)056-1534",
                    :fax => "(106)017-8792",
             :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 => "[email protected]",
        :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

>> puts ProductColor.all.to_yaml

Simply works fine!

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4830096

May also be noted that you can use:

j ProductColor.all.inspect

to output in Json format rather than Yaml

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"
  }
]