Inspecting the return value of a function using Ray

When trying to fix a bug, you might want to see the return value of a function. In this post, we'd like to offer a simple solution.

The problem

Consider this simple code snippet:

class User
{
    public function fullName(): string
    {
		    return "{$this->first_name} {$this->last_name}";
    } 
}

You might think you can do this to display the result in Ray:

class User
{
    public function fullName(): string
    {
		    //This does not work
		    
		    return ray("{$this->first_name} {$this->last_name}");
    } 
}

This does not work because the ray() function returns an instance of the Ray object used to communicate with the Ray app. You can tack on one of the many Ray functions, such as red(), to colorize the output.

ray('hi there')->red();

This will be displayed in Ray as

Back to our original problem: displaying a return value to Ray. This might be your second attempt:

class User
{
    public function fullName(): string
    {
		    $result = "{$this->first_name} {$this->last_name}";
		    
		    ray($result);
		    
		    return result;
    } 
}

That will work, but it is rather cumbersome. To see the output in Ray, you have to introduce a new variable. Send that to Ray, and use it as the return value. That's too much work for simply wanting to see the value.

The solution

To easily debug return value, Ray offers a handy pass function. Any value you pass to pass will be displayed in Ray and returned by the function.

That means you can do this:

class User
{
    public function fullName(): string
    {
		    return ray()->pass("{$this->first_name} {$this->last_name}");
    } 
}

Using pass, we didn't have to introduce a temporary variable. To see the return value in Ray, we can wrap the return value in a pass call.

I hope you enjoyed this little Ray tip.