Making the rails console output a little more pretty

Question

a rails console output looks like this:

User.all
=> [#<User id: 1, name: "Michael Hartl", email: "[email protected]",
created_at: "2011-12-05 00:57:46", updated_at: "2011-12-05 00:57:46">,
#<User id: 2, name: "A Nother", email: "[email protected]", created_at:
"2011-12-05 01:05:24", updated_at: "2011-12-05 01:05:24">]

I was wondering if there is command that can make it easier to read? for example there was a .pretty command in MongoDB console that was formatting the output a little more eye friendly. But not sure if there is something similar in Rails or not.

Answer 1

A bit more elegant shorthand:

y User.all

Answer 2

I've been using pp. The pp stands for "pretty print." No Gem required.

On rails console try doing this:

pp User.all

You'll get each attributes and their value in the record display in a row instead a bundle of them if you simply do User.all.

Here's the documentation:

https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.1.0/libdoc/pp/rdoc/PP.html

I am using Rails 5.1.3 and ruby 2.4.1p111 and it came already installed in my project. If this don't work, I imagine you have to do require 'pp'. I hope this helps.

Answer 3

If you don't want to use a gem, here's the low rent version:

 puts User.all.to_yaml

Answer 4

Also you could use this incredible gem:

Awesome Print