JSON Marshalling losing struct reference - go

I was working through an example on marshalling and decided to get crafty with it. Was hoping I could have a generic interface reference passed in similar to the json.Unmarshall function and handle my other test cases by input instead of repeating the same code (yes, I'm coming from Java). Instead, I get back a map instead of a struct. It also appears I do not have a way to imply downwards what this 'type' of struct is.
Questions:
How would I be able to get the appropriate struct type back?
Is it even reasonable to take this approach of a utility method like this?
Code:
//test 1 - simple dto
var country models.Country
var outCountry, errorCountry = attemptParse("Simple DTO", "./json/country.json", country)
fmt.Println("Return - ", outCountry, " - ", errorCountry)
...
func attemptParse(test string, dataFile string, v interface{}) (interface{}, error){
...
err := json.Unmarshal(data, &v)
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("Test - ", test, " - fail", err)
return nil, err
}
fmt.Println("Test - ", test, " - result:")
fmt.Println(v)
return v, nil
}
Have also tried marshalling to nptr := reflect.New(reflect.TypeOf(v)), but this ended me with an address I could not resolve.
Output:
Test - Simple DTO - start
Test - Simple DTO - result:
map[Capital:Washington DC Continent:North America Name:USA]
Return - map[Capital:Washington DC Continent:North America Name:USA] - <nil>

Try passing a pointer to the attemptParse() function:
var outCountry, errorCountry = attemptParse("Simple DTO", "./json/country.json", &country)
and change
err := json.Unmarshal(data, &v)
to
err := json.Unmarshal(data, v)
Please, see this playground for more details: https://go.dev/play/p/XEN5cZce0tG
I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to test. But I would rather try table-driven tests first: https://dave.cheney.net/2019/05/07/prefer-table-driven-tests.

Related

Can't indexing an array without using another var

I think is something that I miss theoretically from the passing by reference topic but I can't find a way to read the ID without using the support networkInterfaceReference
package main
import (
"context"
"fmt"
"github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/profiles/preview/resources/mgmt/resources"
"github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/compute/mgmt/2021-03-01/compute"
"github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/subscription/mgmt/2020-09-01/subscription"
"github.com/Azure/go-autorest/autorest/azure/auth"
"github.com/ktr0731/go-fuzzyfinder"
)
var selectedSub subscription.Model
var selectedRG resources.Group
var selectedVM compute.VirtualMachine
func main() {
selectedSub = GetSubscription()
selectedRG = GetResourceGroup()
selectedVM = GetVM()
fmt.Printf("Sub: %s\nRG: %s\nVM: %s\n", *selectedSub.DisplayName, *selectedRG.Name, *selectedVM.Name)
// THIS WORK
networkInterfaceReference := *selectedVM.NetworkProfile.NetworkInterfaces
fmt.Printf("%s", *networkInterfaceReference[0].ID)
// THIS DOESN'T WORK
fmt.Printf("%s", *selectedVM.NetworkProfile.NetworkInterfaces[0].ID)
}
...
...
...
func GetVM() compute.VirtualMachine {
vmClient := compute.NewVirtualMachinesClient(*selectedSub.SubscriptionID)
authorizer, err := auth.NewAuthorizerFromCLI()
if err == nil {
vmClient.Authorizer = authorizer
}
vmList, err := vmClient.List(context.TODO(), *selectedRG.Name)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
idx, err := fuzzyfinder.Find(vmList.Values(), func(i int) string {
return *vmList.Values()[i].Name
})
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return vmList.Values()[idx]
}
Hovering to the error showed the following error message:
field NetworkProfile *[]compute.NetworkProfile
(compute.VirtualMachineProperties).NetworkProfile on pkg.go.dev
NetworkProfile - Specifies the network interfaces of the virtual machine.
invalid operation: cannot index selectedVM.NetworkProfile.NetworkInterfaces (variable of type *[]compute.NetworkInterfaceReference)compiler (NonIndexableOperand)
If you want the 2nd way to work:
// WORKS
networkInterfaceReference := *selectedVM.NetworkProfile.NetworkInterfaces
fmt.Printf("%s", *networkInterfaceReference[0].ID)
// THIS DOESN'T WORK
fmt.Printf("%s", *selectedVM.NetworkProfile.NetworkInterfaces[0].ID)
studying the compilation error you are getting (P.S. please don't post screen-shots of code/errors) - the error is failing because you are trying to index a pointer which is not allowed in Go. You can only index maps, arrays or slices.
The fix is simple, since you do two (2) pointer dereferences in the working version, you need to do two (2) same in the single expression - but also you need to ensure the lexical binding order so the indexing is done after the pointer dereference:
fmt.Printf("%s", *(*selectedVM.NetworkProfile.NetworkInterfaces)[0].ID)
Finally, there is no pass-by-reference in Go. Everything is by value. If you want to change a value, pass a pointer to it - but that pointer is a still just a value that is copied.

Extract Prometheus Metrics in Go

I'm new in Golang, what I am trying to do is to query Prometheus and save the query result in an object (such as a map) that has all timestamps and their values of the metric.
I started from this example code with only a few changes (https://github.com/prometheus/client_golang/blob/master/api/prometheus/v1/example_test.go)
func getFromPromRange(start time.Time, end time.Time, metric string) model.Value {
client, err := api.NewClient(api.Config{
Address: "http://localhost:9090",
})
if err != nil {
fmt.Printf("Error creating client: %v\n", err)
os.Exit(1)
}
v1api := v1.NewAPI(client)
ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 10*time.Second)
defer cancel()
r := v1.Range{
Start: start,
End: end,
Step: time.Second,
}
result, warnings, err := v1api.QueryRange(ctx, metric, r)
if err != nil {
fmt.Printf("Error querying Prometheus: %v\n", err)
os.Exit(1)
}
if len(warnings) > 0 {
fmt.Printf("Warnings: %v\n", warnings)
}
fmt.Printf("Result:\n%v\n", result)
return result
}
The result that is printed is for example:
"TEST{instance="localhost:4321", job="realtime"} =>\n21 #[1597758502.337]\n22 #[1597758503.337]...
These are actually the correct values and timestamps that are on Prometheus. How can I insert these timestamps and values into a map object (or another type of object that I can then use in code)?
The result coming from QueryRange has the type model.Matrix.
This will then contain a pointer of type *SampleStream. As your example then contains only one SampleStream, we can access the first one directly.
The SampleStream then has a Metric and Values of type []SamplePair. What you are aiming for is the slice of sample pairs. Over this we then can iterate and build for instance a map.
mapData := make(map[model.Time]model.SampleValue)
for _, val := range result.(model.Matrix)[0].Values {
mapData[val.Timestamp] = val.Value
}
fmt.Println(mapData)
You have to know the type of result you're getting returned. For example, model.Value can be of type Scalar, Vector, Matrix or String. Each of these types have their own way of getting the data and timestamps. For example, a Vector has an array of Sample types which contain the data you're looking for. The godocs and the github repo for the prom/go client have really great documentation if you want to dive deeper.
maybe you can find your answer in this issue
https://github.com/prometheus/client_golang/issues/194
switch {
case val.Type() == model.ValScalar:
scalarVal := val.(*model.Scalar)
// handle scalar stuff
case val.Type() == model.ValVector:
vectorVal := val.(model.Vector)
for _, elem := range vectorVal {
// do something with each element in the vector
// etc

Does Golang have something like python's ast.literal_eval() for converting a string representation of a map into an actual map object?

I need to convert the string representation of a map object into an actual map object in Go. Python has this functionality via ast.literal_eval() and looking for something similar in Go.
I've checked out Go's ast lib https://golang.org/pkg/go/ast but I'm not finding similar functionality. Also a third party lib https://github.com/apaxa-go/eval that "appears" to support this via their example code in the readme (though not specific to maps):
src:="int8(1*(1+2))"
expr,err:=ParseString(src,"")
if err!=nil{
return err
}
r,err:=expr.EvalToInterface(nil)
if err!=nil{
return err
}
fmt.Printf("%v %T", r, r) // "3 int8"
But when attempting with a map:
myMap := "map[blah:1 stuff:2 list:3]"
expr, err := eval.ParseString(myMap, "")
if err != nil{
log.Fatal("%v", err)
}
log.Printf("%v %T", expr, expr)
result, err := expr.EvalToInterface(nil)
if err != nil{
log.Fatal("%v", err)
}
log.Printf("%v %T", result, result)
I get the following error message:
2019/10/27 18:38:27.242352 main.go:33: %vexpression:1:9: expected ']', found ':'
where line 33 is the expression:
expr, err := eval.ParseString(myMap, "")
I'm pretty new to Go so I might be approaching this from the wrong direction. Any help would be appreciated. The end goal is to take this string representation of a map and convert it to JSON.
The map representation in myMap is wrong. You should write it like this
map[string]int{"foo": 1, "bar": 2}

How to create a custom formatter with go 1.13 error?

With go 1.13, we can now wrap our error this way, fmt.Errorf("... %w ...", ..., err, ...) (https://golang.org/pkg/errors).
While this is great, there seems to be no way to create a custom formatter. Let say I want to have different spaces depending on the depth of the error, I'll get all of the errors in the tree if I just get the string representation of the error, err.Error().
Please see below for an example.
I've tried using fmt.Sprintf with %s and %v verbs, get the string representation from Error(), and fmt.Sprint.
// sprintError prints err in top-down order
func sprintError(err error) string {
var stack []string
level := 0
spacesPerLevel := 2
for err != nil {
space := strings.Repeat(" ", level*spacesPerLevel)
msg := fmt.Sprintf("%s%s", space, err)
stack = append(stack, msg)
err = errors.Unwrap(err)
level++
}
msg := strings.Join(stack, "\n")
return msg
}
Example:
err := fmt.Errorf("level 1")
err = fmt.Errorf("level 2: %w", err)
fmt.Print(sprintError(err))
Output:
level 2: level 1
level 1
Expected:
level 2:
level 1
[T]here seems to be no way to create a custom formatter
Exactly. That part of the original proposal did not make it into Go 1.13.
So you cannot do what you would like to do, at least not in an easy way.
You could try and strip of the unwrapped error string from the original
but this relies on string manipulation.

Go — handling multiple errors elegantly?

Is there a way to clean up this (IMO) horrific-looking code?
aJson, err1 := json.Marshal(a)
bJson, err2 := json.Marshal(b)
cJson, err3 := json.Marshal(c)
dJson, err4 := json.Marshal(d)
eJson, err5 := json.Marshal(e)
fJson, err6 := json.Marshal(f)
gJson, err4 := json.Marshal(g)
if err1 != nil {
return err1
} else if err2 != nil {
return err2
} else if err3 != nil {
return err3
} else if err4 != nil {
return err4
} else if err5 != nil {
return err5
} else if err5 != nil {
return err5
} else if err6 != nil {
return err6
}
Specifically, I'm talking about the error handling. It would be nice to be able to handle all the errors in one go.
var err error
f := func(dest *D, src S) bool {
*dest, err = json.Marshal(src)
return err == nil
} // EDIT: removed ()
f(&aJson, a) &&
f(&bJson, b) &&
f(&cJson, c) &&
f(&dJson, d) &&
f(&eJson, e) &&
f(&fJson, f) &&
f(&gJson, g)
return err
Put the result in a slice instead of variables, put the intial values in another slice to iterate and return during the iteration if there's an error.
var result [][]byte
for _, item := range []interface{}{a, b, c, d, e, f, g} {
res, err := json.Marshal(item)
if err != nil {
return err
}
result = append(result, res)
}
You could even reuse an array instead of having two slices.
var values, err = [...]interface{}{a, b, c, d, e, f, g}, error(nil)
for i, item := range values {
if values[i], err = json.Marshal(item); err != nil {
return err
}
}
Of course, this'll require a type assertion to use the results.
define a function.
func marshalMany(vals ...interface{}) ([][]byte, error) {
out := make([][]byte, 0, len(vals))
for i := range vals {
b, err := json.Marshal(vals[i])
if err != nil {
return nil, err
}
out = append(out, b)
}
return out, nil
}
you didn't say anything about how you'd like your error handling to work. Fail one, fail all? First to fail? Collect successes or toss them?
I believe the other answers here are correct for your specific problem, but more generally, panic can be used to shorten error handling while still being a well-behaving library. (i.e., not panicing across package boundaries.)
Consider:
func mustMarshal(v interface{}) []byte {
bs, err := json.Marshal(v)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return bs
}
func encodeAll() (err error) {
defer func() {
if r := recover(); r != nil {
var ok bool
if err, ok = r.(error); ok {
return
}
panic(r)
}
}()
ea := mustMarshal(a)
eb := mustMarshal(b)
ec := mustMarshal(c)
return nil
}
This code uses mustMarshal to panic whenever there is a problem marshaling a value. But the encodeAll function will recover from the panic and return it as a normal error value. The client in this case is never exposed to the panic.
But this comes with a warning: using this approach everywhere is not idiomatic. It can also be worse since it doesn't lend itself well to handling each individual error specially, but more or less treating each error the same. But it has its uses when there are tons of errors to handle. As an example, I use this kind of approach in a web application, where a top-level handler can catch different kinds of errors and display them appropriately to the user (or a log file) depending on the kind of error.
It makes for terser code when there is a lot of error handling, but at the loss of idiomatic Go and handling each error specially. Another down-side is that it could prevent something that should panic from actually panicing. (But this can be trivially solved by using your own error type.)
You can use go-multierror by Hashicorp.
var merr error
if err := step1(); err != nil {
merr = multierror.Append(merr, err)
}
if err := step2(); err != nil {
merr = multierror.Append(merr, err)
}
return merr
You can create a reusable method to handle multiple errors, this implementation will only show the last error but you could return every error msg combined by modifying the following code:
func hasError(errs ...error) error {
for i, _ := range errs {
if errs[i] != nil {
return errs[i]
}
}
return nil
}
aJson, err := json.Marshal(a)
bJson, err1 := json.Marshal(b)
cJson, err2 := json.Marshal(c)
if error := hasError(err, err1, err2); error != nil {
return error
}
Another perspective on this is, instead of asking "how" to handle the abhorrent verbosity, whether we actually "should". This advice is heavily dependent on context, so be careful.
In order to decide whether handling the json.Marshal error is worth it, we can inspect its implementation to see when errors are returned. In order to return errors to the caller and preserve code terseness, json.Marshal uses panic and recover internally in a manner akin to exceptions. It defines an internal helper method which, when called, panics with the given error value. By looking at each call of this function, we learn that json.Marshal errors in the given scenarios:
calling MarshalJSON or MarshalText on a value/field of a type which implements json.Marshaler or encoding.TextMarshaler returns an error—in other words, a custom marshaling method fails;
the input is/contains a cyclic (self-referencing) structure;
the input is/contains a value of an unsupported type (complex, chan, func);
the input is/contains a floating-point number which is NaN or Infinity (these are not allowed by the spec, see section 2.4);
the input is/contains a json.Number string that is an incorrect number representation (for example, "foo" instead of "123").
Now, a usual scenario for marshaling data is creating an API response, for example. In that case, you will 100% have data types that satisfy all of the marshaler's constraints and valid values, given that the server itself generates them. In the situation user-provided input is used, the data should be validated anyway beforehand, so it should still not cause issues with the marshaler. Furthermore, we can see that, apart from the custom marshaler errors, all the other errors occur at runtime because Go's type system cannot enforce the required conditions by itself. With all these points given, here comes the question: given our control over the data types and values, do we need to handle json.Marshal's error at all?
Probably no. For a type like
type Person struct {
Name string
Age int
}
it is now obvious that json.Marshal cannot fail. It is trickier when the type looks like
type Foo struct {
Data any
}
(any is a new Go 1.18 alias for interface{}) because there is no compile-time guarantee that Foo.Data will hold a value of a valid type—but I'd still argue that if Foo is meant to be serialized as a response, Foo.Data will also be serializable. Infinity or NaN floats remain an issue, but, given the JSON standard limitation, if you want to serialize these two special values you cannot use JSON numbers anyway, so you'll have to look for another solution, which means that you'll end up avoiding the error anyway.
To conclude, my point is that you can probably do:
aJson, _ := json.Marshal(a)
bJson, _ := json.Marshal(b)
cJson, _ := json.Marshal(c)
dJson, _ := json.Marshal(d)
eJson, _ := json.Marshal(e)
fJson, _ := json.Marshal(f)
gJson, _ := json.Marshal(g)
and live fine with it. If you want to be pedantic, you can use a helper such as:
func must[T any](v T, err error) T {
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return v
}
(note the Go 1.18 generics usage) and do
aJson := must(json.Marshal(a))
bJson := must(json.Marshal(b))
cJson := must(json.Marshal(c))
dJson := must(json.Marshal(d))
eJson := must(json.Marshal(e))
fJson := must(json.Marshal(f))
gJson := must(json.Marshal(g))
This will work nice when you have something like an HTTP server, where each request is wrapped in a middleware that recovers from panics and responds to the client with status 500. It's also where you would care about these unexpected errors—when you don't want the program/service to crash at all. For one-time scripts you'll probably want to have the operation halted and a stack trace dumped.
If you're unsure of how your types will be changed in the future, you don't trust your tests, data may not be in your full control, the codebase is too big to trace the data or whatever other reason which causes uncertainty over the correctness of your data, it is better to handle the error. Pay attention to the context you're in!
P.S.: Pragmatically ignoring errors should be generally sought after. For example, the Write* methods on bytes.Buffer, strings.Builder never return errors; fmt.Fprintf, with a valid format string and a writer that doesn't return errors, also returns no errors; bufio.Writer aswell doesn't, if the underlying writer doesn't return. You will find some types implement interfaces with methods that return errors but don't actually return any. In these cases, if you know the concrete type, handling errors is unnecessarily verbose and redundant. What do you prefer,
var sb strings.Builder
if _, err := sb.WriteString("hello "); err != nil {
return err
}
if _, err := sb.WriteString("world!"); err != nil {
return err
}
or
var sb strings.Builder
sb.WriteString("hello ")
sb.WriteString("world!")
(of course, ignoring that it could be a single WriteString call)?
The given examples write to an in-memory buffer, which unless the machine is out of memory, an error which you cannot handle in Go, cannot ever fail. Other such situations will surface in your code—blindly handling errors adds little to no value! Caution is key—if an implementation changes and does return errors, you may be in trouble. Standard library or well-established packages are good candidates for eliding error checking, if possible.

Resources