How to make an object of a class and have getters for struct? - go

Question

I have recently started working with golang so having difficulties understanding on how to achieve same thing which I am able to do it easily in Java or C#. I am trying to make an object of configmanager class and when the first time configmanager class is called, it should initialize all my configs and store it in memory in some struct object. And then I should have access to configmanager object and should be able to access all those configs from my main function using some getters maybe?
Below is my configmanager go class. It is very simple for now to make it easier to understand.
package config
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"io/ioutil"
"github.com/david/internal/utilities"
)
type ClientMetrics struct {
ClientMetrics []ClientMetric `json:"clientMetrics"`
}
type CustomerData struct {
Process []string `json:"Process"`
Mat []string `json:"Mat"`
}
type ClientMetric struct {
ClientID int `json:"clientId"`
CustomerData CustomerData `json:"customerData,omitempty"`
LegCustomer []int `json:"legCustomer"`
OtherIds []int `json:"otherIds,omitempty"`
CatID int `json:"catId,omitempty"`
}
func Init(root string) (err error) {
files, err := utilities.FindFiles(root, "process-data.json")
if err != nil {
return fmt.Errorf("cannot find process-data.json file: %v", err)
}
for _, file := range files {
body, err := ioutil.ReadFile(file)
if err != nil {
return fmt.Errorf("unable to read file: %v", err)
}
var auto ClientMetrics
json.Unmarshal(body, &auto)
}
return nil
}
And here is I use it in my main function - This is just basic code just to demonstrate what I am doing but this isn't production ready code.
package main
import (
"github.com/david/internal/config"
)
func main() {
root := "/home/Configurations"
config.Init(root)
//
}
In my above Init function, I find process-data.json file if it is there on the disk and then load it in memory by deserializing it into ClientMetrics object. Everything works fine as shown above.
Problem Statement
Since I am coming from Java and C# background, so my confusion is how can I make an object of configmanager class and how should I initialize all my configs during the first time when I call configmanager and also have access to ClientMetrics struct using some getters. In Java and C#, I used to have constructor where I initialize all these things and then have some getters to access the config. How should I do the same thing in golang.
My main confusion is do we have constuctors in go and how should I make getters to access struct object in my main function? I am just looking for better design in go and how should I do my above code in golang?
Update
I think I wasn't able to explain properly. I have X (let's suppose 5 for now) different json files in a folder and each of those json files needs to have their own struct because they are totally different json files. My configmanager file will be responsible to load all those 5 json files into their own struct and then I should be able to access all those 5 structs and their fields from the object of configmanager. All this should happen during the initialization of configmanager class when it is called for the first time.
Here is just an example where I have bunch of json files in their own corresponding folder (folderX). I have three categories of files (clientMap-*.json, dataMap-*.json, process-data.json) as shown below.
Products
├── folder1
│ ├── clientMap-123.json
│ ├── clientMap-987.json
│ ├── clientMap-7161.json
├── folder2
│ ├── dataMap-18271.json
│ ├── dataMap-12921.json
│ ├── dataMap-98121.json
└── folder3
├── process-data.json
Now I need to read all these files (clientMap-*.json, dataMap-*.json, process-data.json) in their own struct. And I should able to use configmanager class to get corresponding struct and their fields too after unmarshalling.
For example: Read clientMap-*.json files.
files, err := utilities.FindFiles(root, "clientMap-*.json")
// load all clientMap-*.json files in its own struct after unmarshalling
Similarly for dataMap-*.json files
files, err := utilities.FindFiles(root, "dataMap-*.json")
// load all dataMap-*.json files in its own struct after unmarshalling
Also for process-data.json files
files, err := utilities.FindFiles(root, "process-data.json")
// load all process-data.json files in its own struct after unmarshalling
My FindFiles method will find all the files even with regex like above. files variable is an array containing list of all files matching particular pattern. Now I can create ConfigManager struct type holding all other structs for my config but I am trying to find a solution which is easily extensible so that in future if I add any other json file category it should be able to extend easily. What is the correct way to solve this?

Answer 1

This question is hard to answer because you kind of forgot to ask one in a definitive way, so I will start my answer by extracting a question based on what you wrote. I believe we can do so from this:
Problem Statement
[...] my confusion is how can I make an object of configmanager class and how should I initialize all my configs during the first time when I call configmanager and also have access to ClientMetrics struct using some getters
I believe the real question here is "How do I separate the concern of reading and unmarshalling the files from the concern of storing the results for my program to use?".
It's common to separate concerns by breaking things up into multiple functions/methods, which you have already done to some extent. Storage however is strictly a matter of types, so we need a type capable of holding the results. I'll use this opportunity to omit the word Manager from the type's name, because all it does is to provide useless abstraction. This type does not manage the config. It is the config, in that it contains all of the config.
type Config struct {
ClientMapConfigs []ClientMapConfig
DataMapConfigs []DataMapConfig
ProcessDataConfigs []ProcessDataConfig
}
Notice the fields start with an upper-case letter, making them public. This communicates that there could be nonsense in there, as nothing is protected from writes, which aligns with the fact that we read this data from files. A correct program must validate this data before using it. You could then communicate the validity of the validated data in the variable name.
func main() {
validConfig := getValidConfig("path/to/dir")
// ...
}
func getValidConfig(configDirectoryPath string) *Config {
config, err := NewConfigFromConfigDirectory(configDirectoryPath)
if err != nil {
log.Printf("Failed to read config from dir '%s': %v\n", configDirectoryPath, err)
os.Exit(1)
}
if err = ValidateConfig(config); err != nil {
log.Printf("Config from dir '%s' failed to validate: %v\n", configDirectoryPath, err)
os.Exit(1)
}
}
func NewConfigFromConfigDirectory(configDirectoryPath string) *Config {
// <- read individual configs and add to slices here
return &Config{ // This is the closest to a "constructor" that Go has.
ClientMapConfigs: clientMapConfigs,
DataMapConfigs: dataMapConfigs,
ProcessDataConfigs: processDataConfigs,
}
}
Notice that there is no imminent need for the functions validating and reading the config to have a receiver, i.e. be a method of a struct. They're fine as standalone functions until your requirements change in ways which demand the introduction of statefulness for either logic.
Also I use exit code 1 for the error-cases here, because Golang uses code 2 when the program terminates due to a panic. The former can be thought of as a problem with the environment, while the later indicates a problem within the program itself. It's a useful distinction to make, and aligns with the semantics of Exception versus RuntimeException which you may know from Java.

Answer 2

I can have let's say 10 different configs (files) and each of those configs can have their own structs since it's a different configs so I need to have separate struct for them
That looks like dynamic JSON struct unmarshalling, which was presented in 2015 by John Asmuth in decoding with mixed structures
You can run the following example here.
type Dog struct {
Name string
Frisbees int
}
type Cat struct {
Name string
Strings int
}
type RawAnimal struct {
Type string
Cat
Dog
}
type Animal RawAnimal
func (a *Animal) UnmarshalJSON(data []byte) error {
if err := json.Unmarshal(data, (*RawAnimal)(a)); err != nil {
return err
}
switch a.Type {
case "cat":
return json.Unmarshal(data, &a.Cat)
case "dog":
return json.Unmarshal(data, &a.Dog)
}
return fmt.Errorf("unknown type %q", a.Type)
}
From there, your ConfigManager will instantiate the right Config structure, depending on the raw JSON read.

Answer 3

I think the trouble is that you're looking at Go from a Java/C# perspective and thus struggling to make sense of the features. If you have the time, then I would suggest that you go thru some Go tutorials or books before you start coding (this one is pretty good: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/0134190440)
To answer your question directly, what you need to do is to create a function which returns a pointer to an object of the struct (see here for a simple example: https://gobyexample.com/structs)
Taking ClientMetric as an example:
func NewClientMetric(ClientID int, CustomerData CustomerData, LegCustomer []int, OtherIds []int, CatID int) (*ClientMetric, error) {
//validate your inputs
//in case of errors, create and error message in the variable err and then: return nil, err
//other code which would go into a typical constructor would go here
return &ClientMetric{ClientID,CustomerData, LegCustomer, OtherIds, CatID}, nil
}
In this case, the function NewClientMetric is the constructor and it returns a pointer/reference to the newly created object. It also returns an error object, which is the same as saying that the constructor throws exceptions. Just as you would need to use try/catch in Java, you would need to check to handle the err variable returned by this function.
You would need to make similar functions for each of your types.
As for getters & setters, generally speaking, that should be avoided in Go. You can access the attributes of a struct directly. A function (like a getter) is only useful if you're going to do something to the attribute before returning it. Something like this:
type Customer struct {
FirstName string
LastName string
}
func (this *Customer) GetFullName() string {
return this.FirstName + " " + this.LastName
}
and these can then be accessed like this:
var customer *Customer
customer = &Customer{"John","Smith")
fmt.Println(customer.FirstName)
fmt.Println(customer.LastName)
fmt.Println(customer.GetFullName())
Please note that attributes, functions and methods which begin with a capital letter are public, the others are private. If FirstName was written as firstName, it would not be accessible outside the package in which it was declared.
Please do note that I'm not checking for errors if the pointer is null/nil, but that is always recommended.