Convert Ruby object into HTML string with awesome_print - ruby

Question

I'm trying to prettify an Ruby object using awesome_print so I can place this string inside an email and send it off. So in terms of code, (I know this is wrong), but here's what I'm trying to achieve:
my_str = (ap error.object).to_str
# Do something with my_str, like stick it in a <pre> tag inside an html email.
How do I convert the output from ap to string? Reason I'm asking is as I noticed, ap seems to only return the object.

Answer 1

It doesn't seem to be documented in the README.md, but if you look at the Kernel modifications the library makes here: https://github.com/michaeldv/awesome_print/blob/master/lib/awesome_print/core_ext/kernel.rb
You can see that in addition to the ap method, the awesome_print gem also adds an ai method to all objects.
1.9.3p392 :001 > require 'awesome_print'
=> true
1.9.3p392 :002 > test = {a: "b"}
=> {:a=>"b"}
1.9.3p392 :003 > ap test
{
:a => "b"
}
1.9.3p392 :006 > test.ai
=> "{\n :a\e[0;37m => \e[0m\e[0;33m\"b\"\e[0m\n}"
1.9.3p392 :007 > test.ai(html:true)
=> "<pre>{\n <pre>:a</pre><kbd style=\"color:slategray\"> => </kbd><pre><kbd style=\"color:brown\">"b"</kbd></pre>\n}</pre>"
That said, the output formatting might not be that useful (the html version adds a ton of whitespace, and the non-html version has the weird terminal coloring characters), and being an undocumented feature, it's liable to break without warning in a minor version update.
The other thing worth noting in the kernel.rb above is that ap and ai have aliases: awesome_print and awesome_inspect.

Answer 2

awesomeprint is meant for printing ASCII colors and stuff, not HTML. What I'd use is pygments gem:
# gem install pygments.rb
require 'pygments'
str = <<EOT
# This is an awesome comment on my rb script
a = 2
puts a
hsh = {asdf: 1, qwer: 2, uiop: 3}
EOT
Pygments.highlight str
https://github.com/tmm1/pygments.rb