This plugin adds a helpful inspect method to your Craft templates. This will help you see in the dark - figure out what kind of variables you are dealing with, and what methods they implement.

1. Upload this directory to craft/plugins/inspector/ on your server.
2. Enable the plugin under Craft Admin > Settings > Plugins

You can use inspector either as a function or filter:

{{ craft.request | inspect }}
{{ inspect(craft.request) }}

Either way, it will return the same output:

Craft\HttpRequestVariable
-------------------------

Attributes:

Methods:
    getFirstSegment
    getLastSegment
    getParam
    getPost
    getQuery
    getSegment
    getSegments
    getServerName
    getUri
    getUrl
    getUrlFormat
    isSecure

Aha! We can see this variable has some useful methods on it. Let's dig deeper:

{{ craft.request.getSegments | inspect }}

This returns:

Array: ["blog","2012","11","my-post-title"]

Now we're getting somewhere! No more digging around in the documentation trying to figure out what's available to you.

The output is wrapped in <pre> tags to format it nicely.

Add support for Inspector to your plugins! Simply add a getHelpText method to your models, and it will be displayed when people inspect your object. For example:

class PizzaModel extends BaseModel
{
    public function getHelpText()
    {
        return "This variable represents a pizza.";
    }
}

When people inspect your object, they will now see:

Craft\PizzaModel
----------------
This variable represents a pizza.

Attributes:

Methods: