[php] How to output (to a log) a multi-level array in a format that is human-readable?

I'm working on a drupal site and when debugging, I am always having to read through long, nested arrays. As a result, a large portion of my life is spent using the arrow, return, and tab keys, to split up 1000+ character strings into a nested, readable format.

For drupal devs, I can't use devel's dsm(), as I'm working with multi-step #ahah/#ajax forms, and I can only output the arrays to the error log, not to the screen.

Visual example:

Evil:

array ( 'form_wrapper' => array ( '#tree' => true, '#type' => 'fieldset', '#prefix' => '', '#suffix' => '', '#value' => '', 'name' => array ( '#type' => 'textfield', '#title' => NULL, '#size' => 60, '#maxlength' => 60, '#required' => false, '#description' => NULL, '#attributes' => array ( 'placeholder' => 'Email', ), '#post' => array ( 'form_wrapper' => array ( 'name' => '', 'pass' => '', ),

Good:

array ( 
'form_wrapper' => array ( 
    '#tree' => true, 
    '#type' => 'fieldset', 
    '#prefix' => '<div>', 
    '#suffix' => '</div>', 
    '#value' => '', 
    'name' => array ( 
        '#type' => 'textfield', 
        '#title' => NULL, 
        '#size' => 60, 
        '#maxlength' => 60, 
        '#required' => false, 
        '#description' => NULL, 
        '#attributes' => array ( 
            'placeholder' => 'Email', 
        ), 

Edit: Sorry, by "not output to screen", I meant via drupal's system messages where it's possible to output arrays in a clickable, nested format (using devel.module).

Drupal's Devel module has other useful functions including ones that can print formatted arrays and objects to log files. See the guide at http://ratatosk.net/drupal/tutorials/debugging-drupal.html

dd()

Logs any variable to a file named “drupal_debug.txt” in the site’s temp directory. All output from this function is appended to the log file, making it easy to see how the contents of a variable change as you modify your code.

If you’re using Mac OS X you can use the Logging Console to monitor the contents of the log file.

If you’re using a flavor of Linux you can use the command “tail -f drupal_debug.txt” to watch the data being logged to the file.

Simple stuff:

Using print_r, var_dump or var_export should do it pretty nicely if you look at the result in view-source mode not in HTML mode or as @Joel Larson said if you wrap everything in a <pre> tag.

print_r is best for readability but it doesn't print null/false values.

var_dump is best for checking types of values and lengths and null/false values.

var_export is simmilar to var_dump but it can be used to get the dumped string.

The format returned by any of these is indented correctly in the source code and var_export can be used for logging since it can be used to return the dumped string.

Advanced stuff:

Use the xdebug plug-in for PHP this prints var_dumps as HTML formatted strings not as raw dump format and also allows you to supply a custom function you want to use for formatting.

Syntax

print_r(variable, return);

variable Required. Specifies the variable to return information about

return Optional. When set to true, this function will return the information (not print it). Default is false

Example

error_log( print_r(<array Variable>, TRUE) );

This will help you

echo '<pre>';

$output = print_r($array,1);

echo '</pre>';

EDIT

using echo '<pre>'; is useless, but var_export($var); will do the thing which you are expecting.

You should be able to use a var_dump() within a pre tag. Otherwise you could look into using a library like dump_r.php: https://github.com/leeoniya/dump_r.php

My solution is incorrect. OP was looking for a solution formatted with spaces to store in a log file.

A solution might be to use output buffering with var_dump, then str_replace() all the tabs with spaces to format it in the log file.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.print-r.php This function can be used to format output,

$output = print_r($array,1);

$output is a string variable, it can be logged like every other string. In pure php you can use trigger_error

Ex. trigger_error($output);

http://php.net/manual/en/function.trigger-error.php

if you need to format it also in html, you can use <pre> tag

I just wonder why nobody uses or recommends the way I prefer to debug an array:

error_log(json_encode($array));

Next to my browser I tail my server log in the console eg.

tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log