Creating method that accepts any value - go

While I am trying to learn Go (version 1.13) I was trying to implement basic network operation but I got tired with if err != nil and decided to be a bit smarter and created something like this
package operation
type Op struct {
err error
result interface{}
}
func Do(supplier func() (interface{}, error)) *Op {
result, err := supplier()
return &Op {result: result, err: err}
}
func (op *Op) onSuccessMap(supplier func(input interface{}) (interface{}, error)) *Op {
if op.err != nil {
return op
} else {
r, e := supplier(op.result)
return &Op{result: r, err: e}
}
}
func (op *Op) onFailure(errorHandler func(error) (interface{}, error)) *Op {
if op.err == nil {
return op
} else {
newResult, err := errorHandler(op.err)
return &Op{result: newResult, err: err}
}
}
func (op *Op) get() (interface{}, error) {
return op.result, op.err
}
and I wanted to call it like
r,e := operation.Do(func()(*http.Request, error){
return http.NewRequest("GET", "http://target.com", nil)
})
.onSuccessMap(func(req *http.Request)(*http.Response, error) {
//... do something with request
})
.onSuccessMap(func(req *http.Response)(MyDomain, error) {
//... do something with response
})
.onFailure(func(e error) (interface{}, error) {
// .. optionally do something with first error
}).get()
but is seems it is not that simple :)
I cannot pass func()(*http.Request, error) where func()(interface{}, error) is expected
anyway Do(func() (string, error) {return "a", nil}.. dont compile either
I actually dont care what is supplied to previous call if next caller can handle it - probably some kind of generics would be handy but I didn't find anything in docs about it.
I cannot call .onSuccessMap/.onXXX/.. probably because I return *Op rather then Op - should I explicitly dereference *Op, maybe I shouldn't return *Op in first place
can I somehow simplify suppliers function so I dont have to pass all those information - it would be nice if compiler figure out what is going on
maybe I think too much in java way and not go way,
any comments/hints will be highly helpful. maybe the whole idea doesn't make sense :]

This Q&A is very much opinion-based, but my suggestion is do not mplement your own error handlers in this fashion.
Since you are you using go 1.13, I would highly recommend you read the new error handling features in the go-blog.
It allows for chaining errors, and easily unwrapping any particular error type from the error-chain. With errors.Is one can determine if a particular error type occurred. With errors.As you can extract the exact details of that error.
fmt.Errorf with %w is a quick way to generate your own wrapped errors. And if you want more error details, you can simply write your own error types provided they include the Error and Wrap interfaces.

Related

Applying `errors.Is` and `errors.As` on custom made struct errors

package main
import (
"errors"
"fmt"
)
type myError struct{ err error }
func (e myError) Error() string { return e.err.Error() }
func new(msg string, args ...any) error {
return myError{fmt.Errorf(msg, args...)}
}
func (e myError) Unwrap() error { return e.err }
func (e myError) As(target any) bool { return errors.As(e.err, target) }
func (e myError) Is(target error) bool { return errors.Is(e.err, target) }
func isMyError(err error) bool {
target := new("")
return errors.Is(err, target)
}
func asMyError(err error) (error, bool) {
var target myError
ok := errors.As(err, &target)
return target, ok
}
func main() {
err := fmt.Errorf("wrap: %w", new("I am a myError"))
fmt.Println(isMyError(err))
fmt.Println(asMyError(err))
err = fmt.Errorf("wrap: %w", errors.New("I am not a myError"))
fmt.Println(isMyError(err))
fmt.Println(asMyError(err))
}
I expected
true
I am a myError true
false
I am not a myError false
but I got
false
I am a myError true
false
%!v(PANIC=Error method: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference) false
I tried to add
func (e myError) Unwrap() error { return e.err }
func (e myError) As(target any) bool { return errors.As(e.err, target) }
func (e myError) Is(target error) bool { return errors.Is(e.err, target) }
I tried
func asMyError(err error) (error, bool) {
target := &myError{} // was 'var target myError' before
ok := errors.As(err, &target)
return target, ok
}
I tried
func new(msg string, args ...any) error {
return &myError{fmt.Errorf(msg, args...)} // The change is the character '&'
}
but none of these changed anything. I also tried
func asMyError(err error) (error, bool) {
target := new("") // // was 'var target myError' or 'target := &myError{}' before
ok := errors.As(err, &target)
return target, ok
}
and then I got
false
wrap: I am a myError true
false
wrap: I am not a myError true
, which I guess makes sense but again does not solve my problem. I have a hard time to wrap my head this problem. Can you give me a hand?
So the point of errors.Is and errors.As is that errors can be wrapped, and these functions allow you to extract what the underlying cause of a given error was. This essentially relies on certain errors having specific error values. Take this as an example:
const (
ConnectionFailed = "connection error"
ConnectionTimedOut = "connection timed out"
)
type PkgErr struct {
Msg string
}
func (p PkgErr) Error() string {
return p.Msg
}
func getError(msg string) error {
return PkgErr{
Msg: msg,
}
}
func DoStuff() (bool, error) {
// stuff
err := getError(ConnectionFailed)
return false, fmt.Errorf("unable to do stuff: %w", err)
}
Then, in the caller, you can do something like this:
_, err := pkg.DoStuff()
var pErr pkg.PkgErr
if errors.As(err, &pErr) {
fmt.Printf("DoStuff failed with error %s, underlying error is: %s\n", err, pErr)
}
Or, if you only want to handle connection timeouts, but connection errors should instantly fail, you could do something like this:
accept := pkg.PkgErr{
Msg: pkg.ConnectionTimedOut,
}
if err := pkg.DoStuff(); err != nil {
if !errors.Is(err, accept) {
panic("Fatal: " + err.Error())
}
// handle timeout
}
There is, essentially, nothing you need to implement for the unwrap/is/as part. The idea is that you get a "generic" error back, and you want to unwrap the underlying error values that you know about, and you can/want to handle. If anything, at this point, the custom error type is more of a nuisance than an added value. The common way of using this wrapping/errors.Is thing is by just having your errors as variables:
var (
ErrConnectionFailed = errors.New("connection error")
ErrConnectionTimedOut = errors.New("connection timed out")
)
// then return something like this:
return fmt.Errorf("failed to do X: %w", ErrConnectionFailed)
Then in the caller, you can determine why something went wrong by doing:
if error.Is(err, pkg.ErrConnectionFailed) {
panic("connection is borked")
} else if error.Is(err, pkg.ErrConnectionTimedOut) {
// handle connection time-out, perhaps retry...
}
An example of how this is used can be found in the SQL packages. The driver package has an error variable defined like driver.ErrBadCon, but errors from DB connections can come from various places, so when interacting with a resource like this, you can quickly work out what went wrong by doing something like:
if err := foo.DoStuff(); err != nil {
if errors.Is(err, driver.ErrBadCon) {
panic("bad connection")
}
}
I myself haven't really used the errors.As all that much. IMO, it feels a bit wrong to return an error, and pass it further up the call stack to be handled depending on what the error exactly is, or even: extract an underlying error (often removing data), to pass it back up. I suppose it could be used in cases where error messages could contain sensitive information you don't want to send back to a client or something:
// dealing with credentials:
var ErrInvalidData = errors.New("data invalid")
type SanitizedErr struct {
e error
}
func (s SanitizedErr) Error() string { return s.e.Error() }
func Authenticate(user, pass string) error {
// do stuff
if !valid {
return fmt.Errorf("user %s, pass %s invalid: %w", user, pass, SanitizedErr{
e: ErrInvalidData,
})
}
}
Now, if this function returns an error, to prevent the user/pass data to be logged or sent back in any way shape or form, you can extract the generic error message by doing this:
var sanitized pkg.SanitizedErr
_ = errors.As(err, &sanitized)
// return error
return sanitized
All in all though, this has been a part of the language for quite some time, and I've not seen it used all that much. If you want your custom error types to implement an Unwrap function of sorts, though, the way to do this is really quite easy. Taking this sanitized error type as an example:
func (s SanitizedErr) Unwrap() error {
return s.e
}
That's all. The thing to keep in mind is that, at first glance, the Is and As functions work recursively, so the more custom types that you use that implement this Unwrap function, the longer the actual unwrapping will take. That's not even accounting for situations where you might end up with something like this:
boom := SanitizedErr{}
boom.e = boom
Now the Unwrap method will simply return the same error over and over again, which is just a recipe for disaster. The value you get from this is, IMO, quite minimal anyway.

Idiomatic way of returning a not-found error in Golang?

I have a function with this signature in Go:
func GetAccount(ctx context.Context, id uuid.UUID) (*Account, error)
It returns an error if there's an internal error (like the database query fails for some reason), but I'm not sure what I should return if the account is not found. I can think of two different approaches:
Just return a nil account and nil error if no account is found
Return a custom error type like this:
type accountNotFoundErr struct {
id uuid.UUID
}
func (err accountNotFoundErr) Error() string {
return fmt.Sprintf("account not found for user: %v", err.id)
}
func IsAccountNotFoundErr(err error) bool {
_, ok := err.(accountNotFoundErr)
return ok
}
func GetAccount(ctx context.Context, id uuid.UUID) (*Account, error) {
// if the account is not found
return nil, accountNotFoundErr{id}
}
I like the first one because it's simple, but I don't often see Go code which returns a nil result if the error is non-nil. I think the expectation is that, if the error is nil, the result is valid. The second approach fixes that, but it's also a bit more complicated for callers.
What is an idiomatic approach for handling cases like this in Go?
I have read a lot of posts about custom errors in go. Most of them created their own struct that implements the error interface.
The issue I found with that approach was that I did not manage to easily check if an error was of a certain type. The same way, you may be able to check some std lib error like if error == EOF.
Therefore, my favourite way to do that is creating a simple var with erros.New.
var ErrNotFound = errors.New("Resource was not found")
func main() {
err := raise()
if err == ErrNotFound {
fmt.Println("impossibru")
return
}
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("unexpected error")
return
}
}
func raise() error {
return ErrNotFound
}
https://play.golang.com/p/s0ZQfsdLqxB
As #Gavin pointed out in the comments, if you want to provide more context to the error by wrapping it with fmt.Errorf, you need to use errors.Is to check if the specific error was wrapped.
var ErrNotFound = errors.New("Resource was not found")
func main() {
err := raise(42)
if errors.Is(err, ErrNotFound) {
fmt.Println(err)
return
}
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("unexpected error")
return
}
}
func raise(id int) error {
return fmt.Errorf("id %d does not exist, error: %w", id, ErrNotFound)
}
https://play.golang.com/p/hSrkb1Xp4Hn

Multiple values in single-value context

Due to error handling in Go, I often end up with multiple values functions. So far, the way I have managed this has been very messy and I am looking for best practices to write cleaner code.
Let's say I have the following function:
type Item struct {
Value int
Name string
}
func Get(value int) (Item, error) {
// some code
return item, nil
}
How can I assign a new variable to item.Value elegantly. Before introducing the error handling, my function just returned item and I could simply do this:
val := Get(1).Value
Now I do this:
item, _ := Get(1)
val := item.Value
Isn't there a way to access directly the first returned variable?
In case of a multi-value return function you can't refer to fields or methods of a specific value of the result when calling the function.
And if one of them is an error, it's there for a reason (which is the function might fail) and you should not bypass it because if you do, your subsequent code might also fail miserably (e.g. resulting in runtime panic).
However there might be situations where you know the code will not fail in any circumstances. In these cases you can provide a helper function (or method) which will discard the error (or raise a runtime panic if it still occurs).
This can be the case if you provide the input values for a function from code, and you know they work.
Great examples of this are the template and regexp packages: if you provide a valid template or regexp at compile time, you can be sure they can always be parsed without errors at runtime. For this reason the template package provides the Must(t *Template, err error) *Template function and the regexp package provides the MustCompile(str string) *Regexp function: they don't return errors because their intended use is where the input is guaranteed to be valid.
Examples:
// "text" is a valid template, parsing it will not fail
var t = template.Must(template.New("name").Parse("text"))
// `^[a-z]+\[[0-9]+\]$` is a valid regexp, always compiles
var validID = regexp.MustCompile(`^[a-z]+\[[0-9]+\]$`)
Back to your case
IF you can be certain Get() will not produce error for certain input values, you can create a helper Must() function which would not return the error but raise a runtime panic if it still occurs:
func Must(i Item, err error) Item {
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return i
}
But you should not use this in all cases, just when you're sure it succeeds. Usage:
val := Must(Get(1)).Value
Go 1.18 generics update: Go 1.18 adds generics support, it is now possible to write a generic Must() function:
func Must[T any](v T, err error) T {
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return v
}
This is available in github.com/icza/gog, as gog.Must() (disclosure: I'm the author).
Alternative / Simplification
You can even simplify it further if you incorporate the Get() call into your helper function, let's call it MustGet:
func MustGet(value int) Item {
i, err := Get(value)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return i
}
Usage:
val := MustGet(1).Value
See some interesting / related questions:
How to pass multiple return values to a variadic function?
Return map like 'ok' in Golang on normal functions
Yes, there is.
Surprising, huh? You can get a specific value from a multiple return using a simple mute function:
package main
import "fmt"
import "strings"
func µ(a ...interface{}) []interface{} {
return a
}
type A struct {
B string
C func()(string)
}
func main() {
a := A {
B:strings.TrimSpace(µ(E())[1].(string)),
C:µ(G())[0].(func()(string)),
}
fmt.Printf ("%s says %s\n", a.B, a.C())
}
func E() (bool, string) {
return false, "F"
}
func G() (func()(string), bool) {
return func() string { return "Hello" }, true
}
https://play.golang.org/p/IwqmoKwVm-
Notice how you select the value number just like you would from a slice/array and then the type to get the actual value.
You can read more about the science behind that from this article. Credits to the author.
No, but that is a good thing since you should always handle your errors.
There are techniques that you can employ to defer error handling, see Errors are values by Rob Pike.
ew := &errWriter{w: fd}
ew.write(p0[a:b])
ew.write(p1[c:d])
ew.write(p2[e:f])
// and so on
if ew.err != nil {
return ew.err
}
In this example from the blog post he illustrates how you could create an errWriter type that defers error handling till you are done calling write.
No, you cannot directly access the first value.
I suppose a hack for this would be to return an array of values instead of "item" and "err", and then just do
item, _ := Get(1)[0]
but I would not recommend this.
How about this way?
package main
import (
"fmt"
"errors"
)
type Item struct {
Value int
Name string
}
var items []Item = []Item{{Value:0, Name:"zero"},
{Value:1, Name:"one"},
{Value:2, Name:"two"}}
func main() {
var err error
v := Get(3, &err).Value
if err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
return
}
fmt.Println(v)
}
func Get(value int, err *error) Item {
if value > (len(items) - 1) {
*err = errors.New("error")
return Item{}
} else {
return items[value]
}
}
Here's a generic helper function with assumption checking:
func assumeNoError(value interface{}, err error) interface{} {
if err != nil {
panic("error encountered when none assumed:" + err.Error())
}
return value
}
Since this returns as an interface{}, you'll generally need to cast it back to your function's return type.
For example, the OP's example called Get(1), which returns (Item, error).
item := assumeNoError(Get(1)).(Item)
The trick that makes this possible: Multi-values returned from one function call can be passed in as multi-variable arguments to another function.
As a special case, if the return values of a function or method g are equal in number and individually assignable to the parameters of another function or method f, then the call f(g(parameters_of_g)) will invoke f after binding the return values of g to the parameters of f in order.
This answer borrows heavily from existing answers, but none had provided a simple, generic solution of this form.

Built-in helper for "Must" pattern in Go

Is there a more built-in wrapper to make a function that returns (X, error) successfully execute or abort, like regexp.MustCompile?
I'm talking about something like this, but more "built-in".
There is not. The best you'll get is something like this:
func Must(fn func() (interface{}, error)) interface{} {
v, err := fn()
if err != nil {
log.Fatalln(err)
}
return v
}
Then to use it:
Must(func() (interface{}, error) {
return template.ParseGlob(pattern)
}).(*template.Template)
Assuming that template.ParseGlob(pattern) is the call you wanted to wrap.
Go does not have parametric polymorphism, so this kind of code will end up requiring type assertions to restore the original type and so (in my opinion) is more effort than it's worth. The tidiest, idiomatic error handling you'll get for long chains of potential failure is simply to check for an error, and return it. Defer your cleanup handlers:
func MyFunc() (err error) {
a, err := blah1()
if err != nil {
return
}
defer a.Close()
b, err := blah2(a)
if err != nil {
return
}
defer b.Close()
// ad nauseam
}
Long and tedious, but at least it's explicit and easy to follow. Here are two modules I wrote that are crying out for parametric polymorphism that might give you some ideas for dealing without it:
bitbucket.org/anacrolix/dms/futures
bitbucket.org/anacrolix/dms/cache
Since Go 1.18 we can define typed Must instead of interface{}:
func Must[T any](obj T, err error) T {
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return obj
}
How to use: https://go.dev/play/p/ajQAjfro0HG
func success() (int, error) {
return 0, nil
}
func fail() (int, error) {
return -1, fmt.Errorf("Failed")
}
func main() {
n1 := Must(success())
fmt.Println(n1)
var n2 int = Must(fail())
fmt.Println(n2)
}
Must fails inside main, when fail() returns non-nil error
You can even define Mustn for more than 1 return parameter, e.g.
func Must2[T1 any, T2 any](obj1 T1, obj2 T2, err error) (T1, T2) {
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
return obj1, obj2
}
I don't think a built-in mechanism would make sense since you could very well handle a non-nil error in various ways, as does the examples in the template package itself: see "text/template/examplefiles_test.go", illustrating 2 different usage of 'err':
// Here starts the example proper.
// T0.tmpl is the first name matched, so it becomes the starting template,
// the value returned by ParseGlob.
tmpl := template.Must(template.ParseGlob(pattern))
err := tmpl.Execute(os.Stdout, nil)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalf("template execution: %s", err)
}
// Output:
// T0 invokes T1: (T1 invokes T2: (This is T2))
In the particular case of the helper function (*Template) Must(), transforming an error into an exception (panic) isn't always the right course for all go programs (as debated in this thread), and to cover all the possible way to handle an error would mean to create a lot of "built-in" mechanisms.
I have encountered the same problem myself and decided to develop the following solution: https://github.com/boramalper/must
Example:
database := must.MV(sql.Open("sqlite3", "...")).(*sql.DB)
defer must.M(database.Close())
must.M(database.Ping())
// Use MustValVoid (or MVV shortly) if you don't care about
// the return value.
must.MVV(database.Exec(`
PRAGMA foreign_key_check;
...
`))
I am not sure why all the answers here are using the log package, when the
source itself uses panic:
func MustCompile(str string) *Regexp {
regexp, err := Compile(str)
if err != nil {
panic(`regexp: Compile(` + quote(str) + `): ` + err.Error())
}
return regexp
}
My recommendation would be instead of a generic Must wrapper, just implement
Must variants as needed in your code.
https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.16.5/src/regexp/regexp.go#L305-L314

How to get the reflect.Type of an interface?

In order to determine whether a given type implements an interface using the reflect package, you need to pass a reflect.Type to reflect.Type.Implements(). How do you get one of those types?
As an example, trying to get the type of an uninitialized error (interface) type does not work (it panics when you to call Kind() on it)
var err error
fmt.Printf("%#v\n", reflect.TypeOf(err).Kind())
Do it like this:
var err error
t := reflect.TypeOf(&err).Elem()
Or in one line:
t := reflect.TypeOf((*error)(nil)).Elem()
Even Shaws response is correct, but brief. Some more details from the reflect.TypeOf method documentation:
// As interface types are only used for static typing, a common idiom to find
// the reflection Type for an interface type Foo is to use a *Foo value.
writerType := reflect.TypeOf((*io.Writer)(nil)).Elem()
fileType := reflect.TypeOf((*os.File)(nil)).Elem()
fmt.Println(fileType.Implements(writerType))
For googlers out there I just ran into the dreaded scannable dest type interface {} with >1 columns (XX) in result error.
Evan Shaw's answer did not work for me. Here is how I solved it. I am also using the lann/squirrel library, but you could easily take that out.
The solution really isn't that complicated, just knowing the magic combination of reflect calls to make.
The me.GetSqlx() function just returns an instance to *sqlx.DB
func (me *CommonRepo) Get(query sq.SelectBuilder, dest interface{}) error {
sqlst, args, err := query.ToSql()
if err != nil {
return err
}
// Do some reflection magic so that Sqlx doesn't hork on interface{}
v := reflect.ValueOf(dest)
return me.GetSqlx().Get(v.Interface(), sqlst, args...)
}
func (me *CommonRepo) Select(query sq.SelectBuilder, dest interface{}) error {
sqlst, args, err := query.ToSql()
if err != nil {
return err
}
// Do some reflection magic so that Sqlx doesn't hork on interface{}
v := reflect.ValueOf(dest)
return me.GetSqlx().Select(v.Interface(), sqlst, args...)
}
Then to invoke it you can do:
func (me *myCustomerRepo) Get(query sq.SelectBuilder) (rec Customer, err error) {
err = me.CommonRepo.Get(query, &rec)
return
}
func (me *myCustomerRepo) Select(query sq.SelectBuilder) (recs []Customer, err error) {
err = me.CommonRepo.Select(query, &recs)
return
}
This allows you to have strong types all over but have all the common logic in one place (CommonRepo in this example).

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