Dumping a node field as an array in Drupal 6

There are times in Drupal 6 when you need to see what’s actually sitting inside a node’s field – the raw structure, the keys, the values. The UI won’t show you that, and dpm() from Devel can be overkill if you just want a quick dump.

The content_fields() function returns the field data as an array, and wrapping it in var_export() gives you a readable output you can paste into a debugger or log file.

var_export(content_fields('field_name', 'content_type'));

Swap field_name for the machine name of your field and content_type for the content type it belongs to. Run it and you’ll get back the full array structure – keys, values, languages, everything. Useful for debugging field data or just understanding what you’re working with before you write code against it.