Stop for loop by passing empty struct down channel Go - go

Question

I am attempting to create a poller in Go that spins up and every 24 hours executes a function.
I want to also be able to stop the polling, I'm attempting to do this by having a done channel and passing down an empty struct to stop the for loop.
In my tests, the for just loops infinitely and I can't seem to stop it, am I using the done channel incorrectly? The ticker case works as expected.
Poller struct {
HandlerFunc HandlerFunc
interval *time.Ticker
done chan struct{}
}
func (p *Poller) Start() error {
for {
select {
case <-p.interval.C:
err := p.HandlerFunc()
if err != nil {
return err
}
case <-p.done:
return nil
}
}
}
func (p *Poller) Stop() {
p.done <- struct{}{}
}
Here is the test that's exeuting the code and causing the infinite loop.
poller := poller.NewPoller(
testHandlerFunc,
time.NewTicker(1*time.Millisecond),
)
err := poller.Start()
assert.Error(t, err)
poller.Stop()

Answer 1

Seems like problem is in your use case, you calling poller.Start() in blocking maner, so poller.Stop() is never called. It's common, in go projects to call goroutine inside of Start/Run methods, so, in poller.Start(), i would do something like that:
func (p *Poller) Start() <-chan error {
errc := make(chan error, 1 )
go func() {
defer close(errc)
for {
select {
case <-p.interval.C:
err := p.HandlerFunc()
if err != nil {
errc <- err
return
}
case <-p.done:
return
}
}
}
return errc
}
Also, there's no need to send empty struct to done channel. Closing channel like close(p.done) is more idiomatic for go.

Answer 2

There is no explicit way in Go to broadcast an event to go routines for something like cancellation. Instead its idiomatic to create a channel that when closed signifies a message such as cancelling any work it has to do. Something like this is a viable pattern:
var done = make(chan struct{})
func cancelled() bool {
select {
case <-done:
return true
default:
return false
}
}
Go-routines can call cancelled to poll for a cancellation.
Then your main loop can respond to such an event but make sure you drain any channels that might cause go-routines to block.
for {
select {
case <-done:
// Drain whatever channels you need to.
for range someChannel { }
return
//.. Other cases
}
}