Posted about 1 month ago. Visible to the public. Repeats.

Ruby: How to use global variables for a conditional debugger

You can share a state in Ruby with global variables. Even if you should avoid them whenever possible, for debugging an application this could be temporary quite handy.

Example:

Copy
class User

  after_save { byebug if $debug; nil }

  def lock
   self.locked = true
   save
  end

end

Copy
Rspec.describe User do

  let(:user) { create(:user) } 

  before do
   # Many users are created and saved in this hook, but we don't want the debugger to stop for them
  end

  it do
    # At this point we want to stop in the debugger for all following tests, when the :lock call runs into the after_save
    $debug = true
    expect { user.lock }.to change(user, :locked).from(false).to(true) 
  end

end

Running this spec will only trigger one debug session. Otherwise you will have to count how many times you exited the debug session to ensure you are in the "desired" session.

Need to speak with a Rails professional?

makandra has been working exclusively with Ruby on Rails since 2007. Our laser focus on a single technology has made us a leader in this space.

Learn more

Owner of this card:

Emanuel De

Ruby: How to use global variables for a conditional debugger

Owner of this card:

Your thanks were sent
to !

License for source code

Ruby: How to use global variables for a conditional debugger

Owner of this card:

Your thanks were sent to !

License for source code

Your thanks were sent
to !