Hiding and Revealing Struct Info with `inspect`

There are two ways to hide information when printing structs in Elixir.

Hiding by implementing the inspect protol.

defmodule Thing do
  defstruct color: "blue", tentacles: 7
end

defimpl Inspect, for: Thing do
  def inspect(thing, opts) do
    "A #{thing.color} thing!"
  end
end

So now in iex I can't tell how many tentacles the thing has:

> monster = %Thing{color: "green", tentacles: 17}
> IO.inspect(monster, label: "MONSTER")
MONSTER: A green thing!
A green thing!

Note that iex uses inspect to output data which can get confusing.

NEW IN ELIXIR 1.8: You can also hide data with @derive

defmodule Thing do
  @derive {Inspect, only: [:color]}
  defstruct color: "blue", tentacles: 7
end

And now you won't see tentacles on inspection

> monster = %Thing{color: "green", tentacles: 17}
> IO.inspect(monster)
#Thing<color: "green", ...>

In both cases, you can reveal the hidden information with the structs: false option:

> monster = %Thing{color: "green", tentacles: 17}
> IO.inspect(monster)
#Thing<color: "green", ...>
> IO.inspect(monster, structs: false)
%{__struct__: Thing, color: "green", tentacles: 17}