Dumper

An AutoHotkey V2 variable dumping tool for debugging and development.

Motivation

In other languages I've grown accustomed to having nicely formatted indenting when debugging my applications. While I could get by with AHK's built-in OutputDebug or my editors debugger, I just found myself missing the ease of use of a dump or console.log type function.

Features

• nice indented formatting for objects
• console output
• string output
• MsgBox output
• recursion protection
• dump and exit app support
• customizable console theme support

Examples

Console Output

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0
#Include <ahk-dumper\Dumper>

str := "foobar"
dump(str)

>
"foobar"

i := 1234
dump(i)

>
1234

ary := [1, 2, 3]
dump(ary)

>
{
  [1]: 1,
  [2]: 2,
  [3]: 3
}

aryMap := Map("foo", "bar", "asdf", "jkl;")
dump(aryMap)

>
{
  ["asdf"]: "jkl;",
  ["foo"]: "bar"
}

obj := ary
obj.helloWorld := {
  foo: "bar",
  bar: [1, 2],
  baz: "asdf",
}
obj.objInObj := obj ;recursion protected
dump(obj)

>
{
  [1]: 1,
  [2]: 2,
  [3]: 3,
  helloWorld: {
    bar: {
      [1]: 1,
      [2]: 2
    },
    baz: "asdf",
    foo: "bar"
  },
  objInObj: *RECURSION PROTECTED*
}

String Output

str := dumpToString(obj)
MsgBox(str, "obj converted to string output")

MsgBox Output

dumpToMsgBox(obj)

Dump and Exit App

dumpAndExit("asdf")

>
"asdf"

Multiple Variables at Once

dump(str, i, ary, obj)

>
"foobar"
1234

...

How To

Change Theme

You can change the console theme by modifying the setTheme section at the top of the Dumper.ahk file. Available options are "dracula" and "vsCode"... or make your own:

dump(values*) => Dumper().setTheme("vsCode").Call(values*)

See the output in VS Code

You'll need an AutoHotkey debugging extension. zero-plusplus's VS Code extension [link] is confirmed to work but others should work as well. Dumper doesn't do anything particuarly special. Any debugger that works with AHK's built-in OutputDebug[link] function should work with Dumper.

Once a debugger extension is installed and configured F5 will run your current .ahk file inside of VS Code. Find your "debug console" to see Dumper's output.