I am leaning to write unit tests and I was wondering the correct way to unit test a basic http.get request.
I found an API online that returns fake data and wrote a basic program that gets some user data and prints out an ID:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"io/ioutil"
"log"
"net/http"
)
type UserData struct {
Meta interface{} `json:"meta"`
Data struct {
ID int `json:"id"`
Name string `json:"name"`
Email string `json:"email"`
Gender string `json:"gender"`
Status string `json:"status"`
} `json:"data"`
}
func main() {
resp := sendRequest()
body := readBody(resp)
id := unmarshallData(body)
fmt.Println(id)
}
func sendRequest() *http.Response {
resp, err := http.Get("https://gorest.co.in/public/v1/users/1841")
if err != nil {
log.Fatalln(err)
}
return resp
}
func readBody(resp *http.Response) []byte {
body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalln(err)
}
return body
}
func unmarshallData(body []byte) int {
var userData UserData
json.Unmarshal(body, &userData)
return userData.Data.ID
}
This works and prints out 1841. I then wanted to write some tests that validate that the code is behaving as expected, e.g. that it correctly fails if an error is returned, that the data returned can be unmarshalled. I have been reading online and looking at examples but they are all far more complex that what I feel I am trying to achieve.
I have started with the following test that ensures that the data passed to the unmarshallData function can be unmarshalled:
package main
import (
"testing"
)
func Test_unmarshallData(t *testing.T) {
type args struct {
body []byte
}
tests := []struct {
name string
args args
want int
}{
{name: "Unmarshall", args: struct{ body []byte }{body: []byte("{\"meta\":null,\"data\":{\"id\":1841,\"name\":\"Piya\",\"email\":\"priya#gmai.com\",\"gender\":\"female\",\"status\":\"active\"}}")}, want: 1841},
}
for _, tt := range tests {
t.Run(tt.name, func(t *testing.T) {
if got := unmarshallData(tt.args.body); got != tt.want {
t.Errorf("unmarshallData() = %v, want %v", got, tt.want)
}
})
}
}
Any advise on where to go from here would be appreciated.
before moving on to the testing, your code has a serious flow, which will become a problem if you don't take care about it in your future programming tasks.
https://pkg.go.dev/net/http See the second example
The client must close the response body when finished with it
Let's fix that now (we will have to come back on this subject later), two possibilities.
1/ within main, use defer to Close that resource after you have drained it;
func main() {
resp := sendRequest()
defer body.Close()
body := readBody(resp)
id := unmarshallData(body)
fmt.Println(id)
}
2/ Do that within readBody
func readBody(resp *http.Response) []byte {
defer resp.Body.Close()
body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalln(err)
}
return body
}
Using a defer is the expected manner to close the resource. It helps the reader to identify the lifetime span of the resource and improve readability.
Notes : I will not be using much of the table test driven pattern, but you should, like you did in your OP.
Moving on to the testing part.
Tests can be written under the same package or its fellow version with a trailing _test, such as [package target]_test. This has implications in two ways.
Using a separate package, they will be ignored in the final build. Which will help to produce smaller binaries.
Using a separate package, you test the API in a black box manner, you can access only the identifiers it explicitly exposes.
Your current tests are white boxed, meaning you can access any declaration of main, public or not.
About sendRequest, writing a test around this is not very interesting because it does too little, and your tests should not be written to test the std library.
But for the sake of the demonstration, and for good reasons we might want to not rely on external resources to execute our tests.
In order to achieve that we must make the global dependencies consumed within it, an injected dependency. So that later on, it is possible to replace the one thing it depends on to react, the http.Get method.
func sendRequest(client interface{Get() (*http.Response, error)}) *http.Response {
resp, err := client.Get("https://gorest.co.in/public/v1/users/1841")
if err != nil {
log.Fatalln(err)
}
return resp
}
Here i use an inlined interface declaration interface{Get() (*http.Response, error)}.
Now we can add a new test which injects a piece of code that will return exactly the values that will trigger the behavior we want to test within our code.
type fakeGetter struct {
resp *http.Response
err error
}
func (f fakeGetter) Get(u string) (*http.Response, error) {
return f.resp, f.err
}
func TestSendRequestReturnsNilResponseOnError(t *testing.T) {
c := fakeGetter{
err: fmt.Errorf("whatever error will do"),
}
resp := sendRequest(c)
if resp != nil {
t.Fatal("it should return a nil response when an error arises")
}
}
Now run this test and see the result. It is not conclusive because your function contains a call to log.Fatal, which in turns executes an os.Exit; We cannot test that.
If we try to change that, we might think we might call for panic instead because we can recover.
I don't recommend doing that, in my opinion, this is smelly and bad, but it exists, so we might consider. This is also the least possible change to the function signature. Returning an error would break even more the current signatures. I want to minimize this for that demonstration. But, as a rule of thumb, return an error and always check them.
In the sendRequest function, replace this call log.Fatalln(err) with panic(err) and update the test to capture the panic.
func TestSendRequestReturnsNilResponseOnError(t *testing.T) {
var hasPanicked bool
defer func() {
_ = recover() // if you capture the output value or recover, you get the error gave to the panic call. We have no use of it.
hasPanicked = true
}()
c := fakeGetter{
err: fmt.Errorf("whatever error will do"),
}
resp := sendRequest(c)
if resp != nil {
t.Fatal("it should return a nil response when an error arises")
}
if !hasPanicked {
t.Fatal("it should have panicked")
}
}
We can now move on to the other execution path, the non error return.
For that we forge the desired *http.Response instance we want to pass into our function, we will then check its properties to figure out if what the function does is inline with what we expect.
We will consider we want to ensure it is returned unmodified : /
Below test only sets two properties, and I will do it to demonstrate how to set the Body with a NopCloser and strings.NewReader as it is often needed later on using the Go language;
I also use reflect.DeepEqual as brute force equality checker, usually you can be more fine grained and get better tests. DeepEqual does the job in this case but it introduces complexity that does not justify systematic use of it.
func TestSendRequestReturnsUnmodifiedResponse(t *testing.T) {
c := fakeGetter{
err: nil,
resp: &http.Response{
Status: http.StatusOK,
Body: ioutil.NopCloser(strings.NewReader("some text")),
},
}
resp := sendRequest(c)
if !reflect.DeepEqual(resp, c.resp) {
t.Fatal("the response should not have been modified")
}
}
At that point you may have figured that this small function sendRequest is not good, if you did not I ensure you it is not. It does too little, it merely wraps the http.Get method and its testing is of little interest for the survival of the business logic.
Moving on to readBody function.
All remarks that applied for sendRequest apply here too.
it does too little
it os.Exits
One thing does not apply. As the call to ioutil.ReadAll does not rely on external resources, there is no point in attempting to inject that dependency. We can test around.
Though, for the sake of the demonstration, it is the time to talk about the missing call to defer resp.Body.Close().
Let us assume we go for the second proposition made in introduction and test for that.
The http.Response struct adequately exposes its Body recipient as an interface.
To ensure the code calls for the `Close, we can write a stub for it.
That stub will record if that call was made, the test can then check for that and trigger an error if it was not.
type closeCallRecorder struct {
hasClosed bool
}
func (c *closeCallRecorder) Close() error {
c.hasClosed = true
return nil
}
func (c *closeCallRecorder) Read(p []byte) (int, error) {
return 0, nil
}
func TestReadBodyCallsClose(t *testing.T) {
body := &closeCallRecorder{}
res := &http.Response{
Body: body,
}
_ = readBody(res)
if !body.hasClosed {
t.Fatal("the response body was not closed")
}
}
Similarly, and for the sake of the demonstration, we might want to test if the function has called for Read.
type readCallRecorder struct {
hasRead bool
}
func (c *readCallRecorder) Read(p []byte) (int, error) {
c.hasRead = true
return 0, nil
}
func TestReadBodyHasReadAnything(t *testing.T) {
body := &readCallRecorder{}
res := &http.Response{
Body: ioutil.NopCloser(body),
}
_ = readBody(res)
if !body.hasRead {
t.Fatal("the response body was not read")
}
}
We an also verify the body was not modified in betwen,
func TestReadBodyDidNotModifyTheResponse(t *testing.T) {
want := "this"
res := &http.Response{
Body: ioutil.NopCloser(strings.NewReader(want)),
}
resp := readBody(res)
if got := string(resp); want != got {
t.Fatal("invalid response, wanted=%q got %q", want, got)
}
}
We have almost done, lets move one to the unmarshallData function.
You have already wrote a test about it. It is okish, though, i would write it this way to make it leaner:
type UserData struct {
Meta interface{} `json:"meta"`
Data Data `json:"data"`
}
type Data struct {
ID int `json:"id"`
Name string `json:"name"`
Email string `json:"email"`
Gender string `json:"gender"`
Status string `json:"status"`
}
func Test_unmarshallData(t *testing.T) {
type args struct {
body []byte
}
tests := []UserData{
UserData{Data: Data{ID: 1841}},
}
for _, u := range tests {
want := u.ID
b, _ := json.Marshal(u)
t.Run("Unmarshal", func(t *testing.T) {
if got := unmarshallData(b); got != want {
t.Errorf("unmarshallData() = %v, want %v", got, want)
}
})
}
}
Then, the usual apply :
don't log.Fatal
what are you testing ? the marshaller ?
Finally, now that we have gathered all those pieces, we can refactor to write a more sensible function and re use all those pieces to help us testing such code.
I won't do it, but here is a starter, which still panics, and I still don't recommend, but the previous demonstration has shown everything needed to test a version of it that returns an error.
type userFetcher struct {
Requester interface {
Get(u string) (*http.Response, error)
}
}
func (u userFetcher) Fetch() int {
resp, err := u.Requester.Get("https://gorest.co.in/public/v1/users/1841") // it does not really matter that this string is static, using the requester we can mock the response, its body and the error.
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
defer resp.Body.Close() //always.
body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
var userData UserData
err = json.Unmarshal(body, &userData)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return userData.Data.ID
}
I have a use case where I have the code as below. I have a request coming in to hit the backend where I need to append data to a map. My question is how do I convert the below type to a []byte to unmarshal?
Any ideas would be appreciated.
type Example struct {
Category string `json:"category"`
Name string `json:"name"`
}
Incoming Postman request json looks like this:
[{"Category":"TestCategory", "Name":"Sample1"}]
but after doing
jsonString Type: []Example
if err := gc.ShouldBindJSON(&jsonString) it looks like [{TestCategory Sample1}] ; how do I convert this to a []byte?
for _, req := range blob{
var jsonString Example
if err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(jsonString), &blob); err != nil { //this does not work
logger.Fatal(err)
}
//I am checking if a key-value is present and appending it to the map
dict := make(map[string][]Example)
dict[req.Category] = append(dict[req.Category], req)
fmt.Println(dict)
if value, ok := dict["TestCategory"]; ok {
fmt.Printf("Found %d\n", value)
} else {
fmt.Println("not found")
}
}
//I was able to test the above logic by declaring the jsonString as a const and it works
There are two directions in which you can move the data:
from JSON to a Go data structure
// This is your payload coming from the request.
jsonStr := `[{"Category":"TestCategory", "Name":"Sample1"}]`
// This is the Go struct that will hold the unmarshalled data.
var examples []Example
err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(jsonStr), &examples)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
fmt.Println("Examples:", examples) // prints "Examples: [{TestCategory Sample1}]"
from a Go data structure to JSON (either string or []byte)
exampleBytes, err := json.Marshal(examples)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
fmt.Println("Example bytes:", string(exampleBytes)) // prints "Example bytes: [{"category":"TestCategory","name":"Sample1"}]"
You should check out "Go by Example" if you haven't already: https://gobyexample.com/json
Looking at your code:
You are looping on blob but instead of using the req you are trying to unmarshal onto the entire blob each time. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve there but nothing good can come out of changing a struct you're looping over from within the loop.
The request JSON you are listing is an array of JSON objects. You are trying to unmarshal that into a single Example struct. That won't work, you need an array of those.
I'm trying to build a generic function which will parse input (in JSON) into a specified structure. The structure may vary at run-time, based on parameters which are passed to the function. I'm currently trying to achieve this by passing an object of the right type and using reflect.New() to create a new output object of the same type.
I'm then parsing the JSON into this object, and scanning the fields.
If I create the object and specify the type in code, everything works. If I pass an object and try to create a replica, I get an "invalid indirect" error a few steps down (see code).
import (
"fmt"
"reflect"
"encoding/json"
"strings"
)
type Test struct {
FirstName *string `json:"FirstName"`
LastName *string `json:"LastName"`
}
func genericParser(incomingData *strings.Reader, inputStructure interface{}) (interface{}, error) {
//******* Use the line below and things work *******
//parsedInput := new(Test)
//******* Use vvv the line below and things don't work *******
parsedInput := reflect.New(reflect.TypeOf(inputStructure))
decoder := json.NewDecoder(incomingData)
err := decoder.Decode(&parsedInput)
if err != nil {
//parsing error
return nil, err
}
//******* This is the line that generates the error "invalid indirect of parsedInput (type reflect.Value)" *******
contentValues := reflect.ValueOf(*parsedInput)
for i := 0; i < contentValues.NumField(); i++ {
//do stuff with each field
fmt.Printf("Field name was: %s\n", reflect.TypeOf(parsedInput).Elem().Field(i).Name)
}
return parsedInput, nil
}
func main() {
inputData := strings.NewReader("{\"FirstName\":\"John\", \"LastName\":\"Smith\"}")
exampleObject := new(Test)
processedData, err := genericParser(inputData, exampleObject)
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("Parsing error")
} else {
fmt.Printf("Success: %v", processedData)
}
}
If I can't create a replica of the object, then a way of updating / returning the one supplied would be feasible. The key thing is that this function must be completely agnostic to the different structures available.
reflect.New isn't a direct analog to new, as it can't return a specific type, it only can return a reflect.Value. This means that you are attempting to unmarshal into a *reflect.Value, which obviously isn't going to work (even if it did, your code would have passed in **Type, which isn't what you want either).
Use parsedInput.Interface() to get the underlying value after creating the new value to unmarshal into. You then don't need to reflect on the same value a second time, as that would be a reflect.Value of a reflect.Value, which again isn't going to do anything useful.
Finally, you need to use parsedInput.Interface() before you return, otherwise you are returning the reflect.Value rather than the value of the input type.
For example:
func genericParser(incomingData io.Reader, inputStructure interface{}) (interface{}, error) {
parsedInput := reflect.New(reflect.TypeOf(inputStructure).Elem())
decoder := json.NewDecoder(incomingData)
err := decoder.Decode(parsedInput.Interface())
if err != nil {
return nil, err
}
for i := 0; i < parsedInput.Elem().NumField(); i++ {
fmt.Printf("Field name was: %s\n", parsedInput.Type().Elem().Field(i).Name)
}
return parsedInput.Interface(), nil
}
https://play.golang.org/p/CzDrj6sgQNt
while writing a golang webserver I had to use some sort of cache so i chose redis.
I had the need for some sort of function that takes any structure and saves it as is to redis as a value.
Is there any way to do this without using the interface{} as a receiving parameter or repeating myself too much and still staying type safe?
Encode the struct value to a []byte using the gob, json or similar encoding package. Store the []byte in Redis. Reverse the process when fetching the data.
Assuming a Redis client with methods for Set and Get, the code using the JSON package will look something like this:
func set(c *RedisClient, key string, value interface{}) error {
p, err := json.Marshal(value)
if err != nil {
return err
}
return c.Set(key, p)
}
func get(c *RedisClient, key string, dest interface{}) error {
p, err := c.Get(key)
if err != nil {
return err
}
return json.Unmarshal(p, dest)
}
Use it like this to save a value:
var v someType
if err := set(c, key, v); err != nil {
// handle error
}
and like this to retrieve a value. Note that a pointer to the value is passed to get.
var v someType
if err := get(c, key, &v); err != nil {
// handle error
}
The details will need to adjusted depending on the Redis client that you are using.
This approach avoids repetition and is type safe as long as the application sets and gets values for a given key using the same type.
When Unmarshalling data from an endpoint, I almost always have a struct with the data that I am want to get from my request that I unmarshal into. Well there are times where I want to see everything that is returning back to me but I am not sure what some of that data is so I don't know how to define it in my struct. Is there a way to have a struct that can just grab all data being unmarshalled without me having to specify it?
This is what I thought would work but that is not the case
resp, err := httpClient.Get("/api/stuff")
data, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
var myStruct struct{}
json.Unmarshal(data, myStruct)
If you do not know the composition of a JSON object in advance, you can unmarshal into a map[string]interface{}.
var myMap map[string]interface{}
json.Unmarshal(data, &myMap)
See an example here.
If you don't know how to define your struct, then maybe you should use a map. It's a pretty good fit for unmarshalling JSON. Here is an example of how to do it without knowing exactly what data you are receiving:
func parseJSON(r *http.Request) (map[string]interface{}, error) {
var postData interface{}
decoder := json.NewDecoder(r.Body)
err := decoder.Decode(&postData)
if err != nil {
return nil, err
}
return postData.(map[string]interface{}), nil
}
Now you at least have a string name of each piece of data, which should give your application some idea of how to handle it.