DebugMe

This thing is pretty old. There are much better ways of debugging in a complex application. But, you know, I keep returning to this little method time after time. I guess that marks me as a geezer.

A tool to print the labeled value of variables.

Works with local, instance and class variables.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'debug_me'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install debug_me

Examples Usage

require 'debug_me'
include DebugMe

debug_me # Prints only the header banner consisting of tag, method name, file name and line number

debug_me('INFO') # Also prints only the header but with a different tag

debug_me {} # prints the default header and __ALL__ variables

debug_me {:just_this_variable} # prints the default header and the value of only one specific variable

debug_me { [:this_one, :that_one, :that_other_one] } # prints default header and three specific variables

# Use an array of symbols and strings to pass multiple variables for output
# Each element of the array is 'eval'ed with the context binding of the caller
debug_me(){[ :my_var, 'my_complex_var_or_method[my_var]' ]}

debug_me(:header => false) {} # disables the printing of the header; prints all variables

debug_me(:tag => 'MyTag', :header => false) {} # disables header, sets different tag, prints all variables

debug_me('=== LOOK ===') {} # changes the tag and prints all variables with a header line

debug_me('=== LOOK ===') {:@foo} # changes the tag, prints a header line and a specific instance variable

debug_me('=== LOOK ===') {:@@foo} # changes the tag, prints a header line and a specific class variable

debug_me(:ivar => false, :cvar => false) {} # print only the local variables with the default tag and a header line

Default Options

The default options are maintained in a global constant DebugMeDefaultOptions that is outside of the DebugMe name space. I did that so that if you do include DebugMe to make access to the method eaier you could still have the constant with a function specific name that would be outside of anything that you may have already coded in you program.

DebugMeDefaultOptions = {
  tag: 'DEBUG:',   # A tag to prepend to each output line
  time: true,      # Include a time-stamp in front of the tag
  header: true,    # Print a header string before printing the variables
  lvar: true,      # Include local variables
  ivar: true,      # Include instance variables in the output
  cvar: true,      # Include class variables in the output
  cconst: true,    # Include class constants
  file: $stdout    # The output file
}

If you want the output of the method to always got to STDERR then do this:

require 'debug_me'
DebugMeDefaultOptions[:file] = $stderr

If you want the debug_me output to go to a real file:

DebugMeDefaultOptions[:file] = File.open('debug_me.log', 'w')

The rest of the default options are obvious.

You can always over-ride the default options on a case by case basis like this:

debug_me {...}
...
debug_me(header: false){...}

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/[my-github-username]/debug_me/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request