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

I think I'm trying to get the PHP equivalent of print_r() (print human-readable); at present the raw output is:

ActiveRecord::Relation:0x10355d1c0

What should I do?

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.