Activate Hirb Formatted Output in Pry-enabled Rails Console

January 14, 2014

So, you’ve finally found some free time to replace your default Rails console with Pry and now you want to see nice Hirb formatted output instead of the default IRB one? I hear you. To achieve that just add the following lines to your local ~/.pryrc file (e.g. /home/dmoore/.pryrc)

and start (or restart if you already have it running) the Rails console. You should be all set now.

For exmaple, Here is how Hirb formats the output of your Rails model rows:

[dmoore]$ cd <path_to_my_rails_app>
[dmoore]$ rails c
Loading development environment (Rails 4.0.2)
# Graduate is a model class and descendant of ActiveRecord::Base
[1] pry(main)> Graduate.all
  Graduate Load (28.2ms)  SELECT `graduates`.* FROM `graduates`
+----+----------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| id | workflow_state | created_at              | updated_at              |
+----+----------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| 1  | initiated      | 2014-01-06 18:13:02 UTC | 2014-01-06 18:13:02 UTC |
| 2  | initiated      | 2014-01-06 23:31:02 UTC | 2014-01-06 23:31:02 UTC |
| 3  | initiated      | 2014-01-06 23:36:51 UTC | 2014-01-06 23:36:51 UTC |
+----+----------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
3 rows in set

To switch back and forth between the default IRB-foratted output and Hirb-formatted output in Rails console use Hirb.disable | Hirb.enable commands respectively:

[2] pry(main)> Hirb.disable
=> false
[3] pry(main)> Graduate.all
  Graduate Load (0.5ms)  SELECT `graduates`.* FROM `graduates`
=> [#<Graduate id: 1, workflow_state: "initiated", created_at: "2014-01-06 18:13:02", updated_at: "2014-01-06 18:13:02">,
 #<Graduate id: 2, workflow_state: "initiated", created_at: "2014-01-06 23:31:02", updated_at: "2014-01-06 23:31:02">,
 #<Graduate id: 3, workflow_state: "initiated", created_at: "2014-01-06 23:36:51", updated_at: "2014-01-06 23:36:51">]
[4] pry(main)> Hirb.enable
=> true
[5] pry(main)> Graduate.all
  Graduate Load (0.5ms)  SELECT `graduates`.* FROM `graduates`
+----+----------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| id | workflow_state | created_at              | updated_at              |
+----+----------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| 1  | initiated      | 2014-01-06 18:13:02 UTC | 2014-01-06 18:13:02 UTC |
| 2  | initiated      | 2014-01-06 23:31:02 UTC | 2014-01-06 23:31:02 UTC |
| 3  | initiated      | 2014-01-06 23:36:51 UTC | 2014-01-06 23:36:51 UTC |
+----+----------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
3 rows in set
[6] pry(main)>

Today my environment was:

Rails 4.0.2 pry-enabled console
Pry version 0.9.12.4
Ruby MRI 2.1.0.