Outputting specific formats in Ray

#Working with JSON

Want to display the JSON representation of anything you'd like in Ray? Use toJson. You can provide any value that can be converted to JSON with json_encode.

ray()->toJson(['a' => 1, 'b' => ['c' => 3]]);

The toJson function can also accept multiple arguments.

// all of these will be displayed in Ray
$object = new \stdClass();
$object->company = 'Spatie';

ray()->toJson(
    ['a' => 1, 'b' => ['c' => 3]],
    ['d' => ['e' => 5]],
    $object
);

You can send a valid JSON string to Ray with the json function.

It will be displayed nicely and collapsable in Ray.

$jsonString = json_encode(['a' => 1, 'b' => ['c' => 3]]);

ray()->json($jsonString);

The json function can also accept multiple valid JSON strings.

// all of these will be displayed in Ray
ray()->json($jsonString, $anotherJsonString, $yetAnotherJsonString);

#Working with XML

You can send a valid XML string to Ray with the xml function.

It will be displayed as formatted XML and collapsable in Ray.

$xmlString = '<one><two><three>3</three></two></one>';

ray()->xml($xmlString);

#Working with Carbon instances

Carbon is a popular datetime package. You can send instances of Carbon to Ray with carbon.

ray()->carbon(new \Carbon\Carbon());

#Working with files

You can display the contents of any file in Ray with the file function.

ray()->file('somefile.txt');

#Displaying images

To display an image, call the image function and pass a fully-qualified filename, url, or a valid base64-encoded image as its only argument.

ray()->image('https://placekitten.com/200/300');
ray()->image('/home/user/kitten.jpg');

// display base64-encoded images
ray()->image('data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAA…truncated');
ray()->image('iVBORw0KGgoAAA…truncated');

#Displaying a link

You can render a clickable link in Ray, by using the link (or url) methods.

ray()->link('spatie.be'); // we'll assume that you meant `https://spatie.be`
ray()->link('spatie.be', 'Spatie homepage'); // optionally, you can pass a label
ray()->url('myray.app'); // `url` is an alias of `link`

#Rendering HTML

To render a piece of HTML directly in Ray, you can use the html method.

ray()->html('<b>Bold string<b>');

#Displaying text content

To display raw text while preserving whitespace formatting, use the text method. If the text contains HTML, it will be displayed as-is and is not rendered.

ray()->text('<em>this string is html encoded</em>');
ray()->text('  whitespace formatting' . PHP_EOL . '   is preserved as well.');