Sharing a gorilla/mux router across packages - go

Question

I'm having some issues with implementing a slight MVC design with gorilla/mux.
The layout of the modules is as follows:
main.go
-- controllers
---- base.controller.go
---- example.controller.go
-- models
---- base.model.go
---- example.controller.go
All the files in controllers is in the controllers package, same with models and then the main.go is the main package.
Currently I'm just trying to get the Base Controller to be able to be shared with the main package which is working, although it's throwing some errors when trying to implement routes. The build is not throwing any errors, but the routes are not available. If I implement the Walk function in the Gorilla/Mux documentation to print out all the registered routes for the mux.Router then it gives me this error:
&{%!!(MISSING)s(*mux.Router=&{ [0xc4200901b0] map[] true
false false false}) %!!(MISSING)s(http.HandlerFunc=0xc8df0)
[%!!(MISSING)s(*mux.routeRegexp=&{/ false false true false
0xc420095360 / [] []})] %!!(MISSING)s(*mux.routeRegexpGroup=&{
0xc420016240 []}) %!!(MISSING)s(bool=true) %!!(MISSING)s(bool=false)
%!!(MISSING)s(bool=false) %!!(MISSING)s(bool=false)
%!!(MISSING)s(mux.BuildVarsFunc=)}
The reasoning for the global var V1Router *mux.Router is firstly to access it in the main package and also to create subrouters in the other controllers.
I am fairly new to Go, but I'm trying my best to learn the best practices! Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Example code below:
base.controllers.go
package controllers
import (
"fmt"
"bytes"
"net/http"
"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
var V1Router *mux.Router
func init () {
V1Router = mux.NewRouter()
V1Router.StrictSlash(true)
V1Router.HandleFunc("/", BaseHandler)
}
// Base route to access the API Documentation.
func BaseHandler (w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
fmt.Fprint(w, "Hello, Gophers!")
}
main.go
package main
import (
"net/http"
"log"
"github.com/projectrepo/project/models"
"github.com/projectrepo/project/controllers"
"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
func main () {
http.Handle("/v1", controllers.V1Router)
if err := http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil); err != nil {
log.Fatal("Serving error.")
}
}
In response to the comments, I tried this solution with the same result:
package main
import (
"net/http"
"log"
"github.com/projectrepo/project/models"
"github.com/projectrepo/project/controllers"
"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
func main () {
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.Handle("/v1", controllers.V1Router)
if err := http.ListenAndServe(":8000", r); err != nil {
log.Fatal("Serving error.")
}
}

Answer 1

Gorilla mux.Router is supposed to be used to create mapping between a set of predefined rules (e.g. host, path, protocol, scheme, etc...) and it's handler (http.Handler or http.HandlerFunc). Gorilla mux can be used to replace standard server mux. If you combine gorilla/mux with built in http server mux as your original question, i.e.
func main () {
http.Handle("/v1", controllers.V1Router)
if err := http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil); err != nil {
log.Fatal("Serving error.")
}
}
what actually happen when a client access /v1 is controllers.V1Router will be called with request path /v1 passed to V1Router1. In the controllers.V1Router, you defined that / will be handled by BaseHandler. However, since incoming request path is /v1, it won't match to your routing table. If you want to define sub routing, you can do as follows (this is what I mean in first comment):
func main () {
r := mux.NewRouter()
v1 := r.PathPrefix("/v1").Subrouter()
controllers.RegisterHandlers(v1)
if err := http.ListenAndServe(":8000", r); err != nil {
log.Fatal("Serving error.")
}
}
Then in the controllers (base.controllers.go) define
//Register handlers and it's sub router
func RegisterHandlers(r *mux.Router) {
//base handler, i.e. /v1
r.StrictSlash(true)
r.HandleFunc("/", BaseHandler)
//example sub-router, i.e. /v1/example
ex := r.PathPrefix("/example").Subrouter()
ex.HandleFunc("/", ExampleHandler)
//other handlers...
}