What is a python equivalent of PHP's var_dump()

Question

When debugging in PHP I frequently find it useful to simply stick a var_dump($foo, $bar, ...) in my code to show me the the what a variable is, what is value is, and the same for anything that it contains.

What is a good python equivalent for this?

I have seen several things in my Google searching that are somewhat equivalent, but nothing that is the same or better.

Answer 1

print

For your own classes, just def a __str__ method

Answer 2

To display a value nicely, you can use the pprint module. The easiest way to dump all variables with it is to do

pprint.pprint(globals())
pprint.pprint(locals())

If you are running in CGI, a useful debugging feature is the cgitb module, which displays the value of local variables as part of the traceback.

Answer 3

PHP's var_export() usually shows a serialized version of the object that can be exec()'d to re-create the object. The closest thing to that in Python is repr()

"For many types, this function makes an attempt to return a string that would yield an object with the same value when passed to eval() [...]"

Answer 4

So I have taken the answers from this question and another question and came up below. I suspect this is not pythonic enough for most people, but I really wanted something that let me get a deep representation of the values some unknown variable has. I would appreciate any suggestions about how I can improve this or achieve the same behavior easier.

def dump(obj):
  '''return a printable representation of an object for debugging'''
  newobj=obj
  if '__dict__' in dir(obj):
    newobj=obj.__dict__
    if ' object at ' in str(obj) and not newobj.has_key('__type__'):
      newobj['__type__']=str(obj)
    for attr in newobj:
      newobj[attr]=dump(newobj[attr])
  return newobj

Here is the usage

class stdClass(object): pass
obj=stdClass()
obj.int=1
obj.tup=(1,2,3,4)
obj.dict={'a':1,'b':2, 'c':3, 'more':{'z':26,'y':25}}
obj.list=[1,2,3,'a','b','c',[1,2,3,4]]
obj.subObj=stdClass()
obj.subObj.value='foobar'

from pprint import pprint
pprint(dump(obj))

and the results.

{'__type__': '<__main__.stdClass object at 0x2b126000b890>',
 'dict': {'a': 1, 'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'more': {'y': 25, 'z': 26}},
 'int': 1,
 'list': [1, 2, 3, 'a', 'b', 'c', [1, 2, 3, 4]],
 'subObj': {'__type__': '<__main__.stdClass object at 0x2b126000b8d0>',
            'value': 'foobar'},
 'tup': (1, 2, 3, 4)}

Answer 5

I use self-written Printer class, but dir() is also good for outputting the instance fields/values.

class Printer:

       def __init__ (self, PrintableClass):
           for name in dir(PrintableClass):
               value = getattr(PrintableClass,name)
               if  '_' not in str(name).join(str(value)):
                    print '  .%s: %r' % (name, value)

The sample of usage:

Printer(MyClass)

Answer 6

I think the best equivalent to PHP's var_dump($foo, $bar) is:

print vars(foo),vars(bar)