Rails - Nov 2004 - Synthesizing a debug display from an action?

Hi all,

In a template, you can do this:

  <%= debug @variable %>

and you get a YAML dump of the variable in the browser.  I can''t find
a way to do that from an action.

The following code results in NoMethodError (debug).  That''s because
debug is in ViewHelper.

  def action_method
    render_text(debug @variable)
  end

Can this outcome be easily achieved (without creating a view)?

Thanks,
Gavin

Gavin Sinclair wrote:
> Can this outcome be easily achieved (without creating a view)?
The debug helper implements it like this:

def debug(object)
   begin
     Marshal::dump(object)
     "<pre class=''debug_dump''>" +
     "#{h(object.to_yaml).gsub("  ", "&nbsp;
")}" +
     "</pre>"
   rescue Object => e
     # Object couldn''t be dumped, perhaps because of singleton methods
     # -- this is the fallback
     "<code
class=''debug_dump''>#{h(object.inspect)}</code>"
   end
end

Note that it uses the h() method, which comes from ERb::Util -
   require ''erb''

Tim.

-- 
Tim Bates
tim-kZbwfhiKUx26c6uEtOJ/EA@public.gmane.org