From http://www.rubyinside.com/columnized-text-datasets-in-rails-71.html:
Inspired by: http://blog.caboo.se/articles/2006/06/10/pretty-tables-for-ruby-objects

It gives a MySQL-command-line-client style textual view of data stored in your Rails database. The syntax worked like this:

   1  
   2  Something.find(:all, :conditions => ‘whatever‘).pretty_print

   1  
   2  class Array
   3  
   4    protected
   5  
   6      def columnized_row(fields, sized)
   7        r = []
   8        fields.each_with_index do |f, i|
   9          r << sprintf(�%0-#{sized[i]}s“, f.to_s.gsub(/\n|\r/, ‘’).slice(0, sized[i]))
  10        end
  11        r.join(’ | ‘)
  12      end
  13  
  14    public
  15  
  16    def columnized(options = {})
  17      sized = {}
  18      self.each do |row|
  19        row.attributes.values.each_with_index do |value, i|
  20          sized[i] = [sized[i].to_i, row.attributes.keys[i].length, value.to_s.length].max
  21          sized[i] = [options[:max_width], sized[i].to_i].min if options[:max_width]
  22        end
  23      end
  24  
  25      table = []
  26      table << header = columnized_row(self.first.attributes.keys, sized)
  27      table << header.gsub(/./, ‘-‘)
  28      self.each { |row| table << columnized_row(row.attributes.values, sized) }
  29      table.join(�\n“)
  30    end
  31  end
  32  
  33  class ActiveRecord::Base
  34    def columnized(options = {})
  35      [*self].columnized(options)
  36    end
  37  end
  38  

To use:

   1  
   2  >> puts Post.find(:all).columnized(:max_width => 10)
   3  updated_at | title      | private | url | thumb      | metadata | movie      | id  | views | content    | user_id | created_at
   4  ——————————————————————————————————————————
   5  Wed May 31 | tetwer     | 0       |     |            |          |            | 909 | 0     | video:xyzz | 1       | Wed May 31
   6  Wed May 31 | bbbb       | 0       |     |            |          |            | 1   | 15    | // descrip | 1       | Tue May 23
   7  Wed May 31 | cxzcxzx    | 0       |     |            |          |            | 906 | 19    | // descrip | 1       | Tue May 23
   8  Wed May 31 | jklklkl;   | 0       |     |            |          |            | 907 | 35    | // descrip | 1       | Tue May 23

If you want to use it with your project, put the code into lib/columnized.rb, use require ‘columnized’, and you’re ready to roll. Unlike courtenay’s version, mine only supports max_width, but I didn’t consider changing the column separator too important.