Revisiting template debugging via printf

support
1

I’ve been looking at {{ printf( "%v" ...) }}. It works well for simple variables, but when I’m looking at a larger level, it’s just too hard for me to read.

I’ve been looking at using reflect in a pretty-print function. It’s crufty.

I tried adding String() methods to Node, Page, etc, that wrap up the output in <li>...</li> pairs doesn’t feel like a very clean solution.

My favorite is using the JSON marshaling function. Except for the (expected) quoting, it does what I’m looking for. It’s a simple function, too:

func DumpVar(v interface{}) string {
	j,err := json.MarshalIndent(v, "", "  ")
	if err != nil {
		return ""
	}
	return string(j)
}

Mapping “dumpvar” to DumpVar in tpl/template_funcs.go allows for:

<code><pre>{{ dumpvar . }}</pre></code>

Which gives me something like:

{
  "Version": "0.16-DEV",
  "Generator": "\u003cmeta name=\"generator\" content=\"Hugo 0.16-DEV\" /\u003e",
  "CommitHash": "",
  "BuildDate": ""
}
"\u003cmeta name=\"generator\" content=\"Hugo 0.16-DEV\" /\u003e"
{
  "RSSLink": "http://localhost:1313/index.xml",
  "Data": {
    "Pages": [
      {
        "Params": {
          "series": [
            "using"
          ]
        },

And I can create a partial to wrap the code+pre for me.

Is this a general enough solution or should I keep banging away on reflect?

3 Likes
2

I know this was a long time back… but are you still working on this? I have some interest in this type of debugging.

I believe this, or something like it would be helpful in understanding what Hugo and/or the Go template system is doing.

Something simpler would be nice as well, like dumping nested data:

main
menu
apple
imac.html
mini.html
macpro.html

…that sort of thing. taxonomies, menus, etc.

3

The PR was rejected. The concept didn’t add value.

4

The dumpvar func above is the same as doing:

<code><pre>{{ . | jsonify }}</pre></code>

There are, however, two problems with the above:

  • It doesn’t handle cyclic references. It will not panic, but you will not get .Page.Site and some other entities.
  • It doesn’t handle funcs – and that will miss out on a lot

We can make some custom marshaler for this, but that is work, and I want to wait with that until we have a stable object model.

5

Yep. That’s part of why the concept didn’t add value. It needed much more work.