Clojure Data Inspector tools

Clojure has a strong focus on built in data structures (list, vector, hash-map, set) to represent information in the system. Tools to inspect data and browse through nested or large data sets are invaluable in understanding what the system is doing.

There are many clojure.core functions that can be used to explore data structures and transform them to produce specific views on data.

tap> and datafy provide an elegant way of exploring data, rather than a classic println expression.

Data Inspector tools capture and visualize results from evaluated expressions as well as tools to specifically visualize tap> expressions (Reveal, Portal).

Common approaches

• Portal tool to navigate and visualise data via tap> for use with any editor or directly with a REPL prompt
• Clojure inspector built-in Java Swing based inspector
• CIDER inspect Emacs specific tool (Practicalli Spacemacs)

Practicalli recommends Portal

Portal works with any Clojure connected editor and can inspect tap> expressions and automatically inspect all evaluation results over nREPL for a complete REPL history.

Practicalli sends all log events to Portal using a custom mulog publisher.