Laravel Artisan Tinker: The show Command

The show command is similar to the ls command in that it helps you to learn more about a class instance or object, except that it will show you the underlying code for any function, class, object instance, constant, method or property. Using our $user Eloquent model from the ls section, we can easily view the code behind the model's can method:

1>>> show $user::can
2  > 16|     public function can($ability, $arguments = [])
3    17|     {
4    18|         return app(Gate::class)->forUser($this)->check($ability,
5                                                               $arguments);
6    19|     }

The show command can also be used to view the code behind functions defined in the global namespace, such as the dd helper function:

1>>> show dd
2  > 492|     function dd()
3    493|     {
4    494|         array_map(function ($x) {
5    495|             (new Dumper)->dump($x);
6    496|         }, func_get_args());
7    497|
8    498|         die(1);
9    499|     }

It can also be used to show entire class definitions, such as when issuing the show App\User command to view the code behind the default User Eloquent model.

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