How to make an addressable getter that casts from an interface - go

Question

I have the concept of Context which is a map that can hold any structure. Basically, I want to create a generic getter that adddressably 'populates' the destination interface (similarly to how json decoding works).
Here's an example of how I want this to work:
type Context map[string]interface{}
// Random struct that will be saved in the context
type Step struct {
Name string
}
func main() {
stepA := &Step{Name: "Cool Name"}
c := Context{}
c["stepA"] = stepA
var stepB *Step
err := c.Get("stepA", stepB)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Println(stepB.Name) // Cool Name
stepB.Name = "CoolName2"
fmt.Println(stepA.Name) // I want to say: CoolName2
}
func (c Context) Get(stepId string, dest interface{}) error {
context, ok := c[stepId]
if !ok {
return nil
}
destinationValue := reflect.ValueOf(dest)
contextValue := reflect.ValueOf(context)
destinationValue.Set(contextValue) // Errors here
return nil
}
I leaned towards using reflect, but maybe I don't need it? - so opened to other suggestions (except for generics as that complicates other matters) I'm getting the following error with the above:
panic: reflect: reflect.Value.Set using unaddressable value
You can test it here.

Answer 1

The argument passed to Get must be a pointer type whose element type is identical to the type in the context map. So if the value in the context map is of type *Step, then the argument's type must be **Step. Also the passed in argument cannot be nil, it can be a pointer to nil, but it itself cannot be nil.
So in your case you should do:
var stepB *Step
err := c.Get("stepA", &stepB) // pass pointer-to-pointer
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
And the Get method, fixed up a bit:
func (c Context) Get(stepId string, dest interface{}) error {
context, ok := c[stepId]
if !ok {
return nil
}
dv := reflect.ValueOf(dest)
if dv.Kind() != reflect.Ptr || dv.IsNil() {
return errors.New("dest must be non-nil pointer")
}
dv = dv.Elem()
cv := reflect.ValueOf(context)
if dv.Type() != cv.Type() {
return errors.New("dest type does not match context value type")
}
dv.Set(cv)
return nil
}
https://go.dev/play/p/OECttqp1aVg