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In PHP, it was extremely easy to start hacking away and figuring out what was going on on a page. Just throw in a bunch of echos and print_r's and that was about it. It appears that this technique is not working for me in python. I am getting practice by hacking around in a python photo upload module, and when a photo is uploaded, it creates 3 different size photos. I found the code that does this, but I want to see the state at that particular moment. I tried doing a "print" on the size variable, but it did not show up in my browser.

I guess a more straightforward question would be, is it "pythonic" do debug using the browser ( equivalent to echo's and print_r's in php ), or is this what the python console is for? Thanks!

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Use the logging module rather than printing stuff to stdout.

Using the interpreter in interactive mode is a great way to try out code, and pdb is very useful for real debugging.

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Thank you for bringing this up. How, though, would I emulate uploading a picture through the console?? This is the part that is confusing me. With php, I just find the view that is being executed, and print_r. Then load the page, upload images, and look at the vars. Can you quickly walk me through how to 1.emulate the photo upload, then 2. examine variables. Again, step 1 is the confusing part for me. Thanks!
@Chris: for something like that, logging.debug() is the way to go; depending on your web framework, print probably won't send anything to the response to the browser (and if it does, it might not do it in a useful way; often you end up accidentally writing to the HTTP headers)
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It's "pythonic" to do debugging using the pdb module.

But really, if you're just "hacking around", then I suggest messing around with an interactive interpreter interface, especially one that supports autocompletion (Python itself comes with IDLE right out of the box).

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You need to learn how to use a debugger ;) Hacking with prints is cool for simple php, but you can save a lot of time in higher languages with a debugger.

As mentioned, PDP is a place to start http://docs.python.org/library/pdb.html

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I know how to use a debugger :P. I am just thoroughly confused as to how to test a web page using a python command prompt. See my first response to wooble's answer as to what is confusing. Thanks for your input!
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As others have mentioned PDB, I'll take the opportunity to sing the praises of Eclipse using the pydev plugin, which is absolutely fantastic. IDLE is also well worth a go. Both of these IDEs allow you to step through code, inspect variables, auto-complete, etc. etc.

http://pydev.org/

Download Eclipse then use the Software Updates menu to add in PyDev.

http://pydev.org/updates

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PyCharm from JetBrains is as good as all their other products. It has an integrated debugger and lots more.

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