How to display a readable array – Laravel

After I write:

Route::get('/', function()
{
    dd(User::all());
});

And after I refresh the browser I get an unreadable array. Is there a way to get that array in a readable format?

Answer

dd() dumps the variable and ends the execution of the script ⁽¹⁾, so surrounding it with <pre> tags will leave it broken. Just use good ol’ var_dump() (or print_r() if you know it’s an array)

Route::get('/', function()
{
    echo '<pre>';
    var_dump(User::all());
    echo '</pre>';
    //exit;  <--if you want
});

Update:

I think you could format down what’s shown by having Laravel convert the model object to array:

Route::get('/', function()
{
    echo '<pre>';
    $user = User::where('person_id', '=', 1);
    var_dump($user->toArray()); // <---- or toJson()
    echo '</pre>';
    //exit;  <--if you want
});

---

(1) For the record, this is the implementation of dd():

function dd()
{
    array_map(function($x) { var_dump($x); }, func_get_args()); die;
}