What is a Python equivalent of PHP's var_dump()?

print

For your own classes, just def a __str__ method

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() […]”

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)}

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)

I think the best equivalent to PHP’s var_dump($foo, $bar) is combine print with vars:

print vars(foo),vars(bar)

The closest thing to PHP‘s var_dump() is pprint() with the getmembers() function in the built-in inspect module:

from inspect import getmembers
from pprint import pprint
pprint(getmembers(yourObj))

I don’t have PHP experience, but I have an understanding of the Python standard library.

For your purposes, Python has several methods:

logging module;

Object serialization module which is called pickle. You may write your own wrapper of the pickle module.

If your using var_dump for testing, Python has its own doctest and unittest modules. It’s very simple and fast for design.

I wrote a very light-weight alternative to PHP’s var_dump for using in Python and made it open source later.

GitHub: https://github.com/sha256/python-var-dump

You can simply install it using pip:

pip install var_dump

Usage example:

from var_dump import var_dump

var_dump(1, {"testkey1": "testval1", "testkey2": "testval2".encode("ascii")},
 ["testval"], "test", "test".encode("ascii"), set([1,2,3]))

prints

#0 int(1) 
#1 dict(2) 
    ['testkey1'] => str(8) "testval1"
    ['testkey2'] => object(bytes) (b'testval2')
#2 list(1)
    [0] => str(7) "testval"
#3 str(4) "test"
#4 object(bytes) (b'test')
#5 object(set) ({1, 2, 3})

Old topic, but worth a try.

Here is a simple and efficient var_dump function:

def var_dump(var, prefix=''):
    """
    You know you're a php developer when the first thing you ask for
    when learning a new language is 'Where's var_dump?????'
    """
    my_type = '[' + var.__class__.__name__ + '(' + str(len(var)) + ')]:'
    print(prefix, my_type, sep='')
    prefix += '    '
    for i in var:
        if type(i) in (list, tuple, dict, set):
            var_dump(i, prefix)
        else:
            if isinstance(var, dict):
                print(prefix, i, ': (', var[i].__class__.__name__, ') ', var[i], sep='')
            else:
                print(prefix, '(', i.__class__.__name__, ') ', i, sep='')

Sample output:

>>> var_dump(zen)

[list(9)]:
    (str) hello
    (int) 3
    (int) 43
    (int) 2
    (str) goodbye
    [list(3)]:
        (str) hey
        (str) oh
        [tuple(3)]:
            (str) jij
            (str) llll
            (str) iojfi
    (str) call
    (str) me
    [list(7)]:
        (str) coucou
        [dict(2)]:
            oKey: (str) oValue
            key: (str) value
        (str) this
        [list(4)]:
            (str) a
            (str) new
            (str) nested
            (str) list