Debug tools
Rails comes with a debug helper you can use in views:
<%= debug @user %>
This will produce output like this :
--- !ruby/object:User
attributes:
name: Jane Loe
username: janeloe
id: "1"
password: fc46324eea5eede31c00b9026e5037e162dccda8
Add on helpers
The Rails Plugin to Help Debug Views describes a plugin that makes it easy to raise a Smarty like popup dumping all assigns, sessions, parameter and flash variables. The plugin was derived from code available at Snippets.
This is especially useful if you work together with designers who have no idea what kind of information are exported by the controllers in a given view.
category:Howto