golang not supporting struct slice depth with template - go

I stuck with an unique problem. To learn golang, I created a twitter kind of website. It has tweets and each tweets can have comments and each comment can have sub-comments.
Showing struct pd in homepage.html
Env.Tpl.ExecuteTemplate(w, "homePage.html", pd)
where pd is pagedata (I removed extra information for simplicity)
type PageData struct {
TweetView []tweets.TweetView
}
Where tweet.TweetView is
type TweetView struct {
Tweet
CV []comments.Comment
}
where comments.Comment is
type Comment struct {
TweetID int64
ParentCommentID int64
CommentID int64
CreatedAt time.Time
Name string
UserID int64
CommentMsg string
}
This works. but if I change the CV in tweetView with comment.CommentView .. template stop showing TweetView.
comment.CommentView is
type CommentView struct {
Comment
CC []Comment
}
the new TweetView would be defined as
type TweetView struct {
Tweet
CV []comments.CommentView
}
Getting this error, when trying to make a datastore query to extract tweet object into Tweetview
err := datastore.Get(ctx, tweetKey, &tweetView[v])
datastore: flattening nested structs leads to a slice of slices: field
"CV",
I think it is a limitation of golang. What should I do?

I was able to solve the problem. The problem was with datastore.Get query.
It was giving below error when I was running
err := datastore.Get(ctx, tweetKey, &tweetView[v])
datastore: flattening nested structs leads to a slice of slices: field
"CV",
So what I changed the query like this
var tweetTemp Tweet
datastore.Get(ctx, tweetKey, &tweetTemp)
tweetSlice[v].Tweet = tweetTemp
Please let me know if you see problem with this approach

Related

Dynamically Create Structs in Golang

So I am working with an external API, whose responses I wanted to parse. The incoming responses are of a fixed format i.e.
type APIResponse struct {
Items []interface{} `json:"items"`
QuotaMax int `json:"quota_max"`
QuotaRemaining int `json:"quota_remaining"`
}
So for each response I am parsing the items. Now the items can be of diff types as per the request. It can be a slice of sites, articles, etc. Which have their individual models. like:
type ArticleInfo struct {
ArticleId uint64 `json:"article_id"`
ArticleType string `json:"article_type"`
Link string `json:"link"`
Title string `json:"title"`
}
type SiteInfo struct {
Name string `json:"name"`
Slug string `json:"slug"`
SiteURL string `json:"site_url"`
}
Is there any way, when parsing the input define the type of Items in APIResponse. I don't want to create separate types for individual responses.
Basically want to Unmarshall any incoming response into the APIResponse struct.
Change type of the Items field to interface{}:
type APIResponse struct {
Items interface{} `json:"items"`
...
}
Set the response Items field to pointer of the desired type. Unmarshal to the response:
var articles []ArticleInfo
response := APIResponse{Items: &articles}
err := json.Unmarshal(data, &response)
Access the articles using variable articles.
Run an example on the playground.

Marshal struct field to JSON without field name

I need to marshal into this JSON format:
{"messageProtocolHandshake":[{"handshakeType":"announceMax"},{"version":[{"major":1},{"minor":0}]}]}
Problem is matching the handshakeType. My struct is
type MessageProtocolHandshake struct {
HandshakeType HandshakeType `json:"handshakeType"`
Version []Version `json:"version"`
}
type HandshakeType struct {
HandshakeType string
}
Marshaling can be done using slice of interface:
func (h MessageProtocolHandshake) MarshalJSON() ([]byte, error) {
res := make([]interface{}, 3)
res[0] = struct {
HandshakeType string `json:"handshakeType"`
}{h.HandshakeType.HandshakeType}
res[1] = struct {
Version []Version `json:"version"`
}{h.Version}
return json.Marshal(res)
}
Using a simple marshaler/unmarshaler takes away the surrounding curly brackets from the handshakeType, so that doesn't work:
{"messageProtocolHandshake":[{"handshakeType":"announceMax","version":[{"major":1,"minor":0}],"formats":[{"format":"JSON-UTF8"}]}]}
Seems as if Go applies some heuristic in that case on the retuned byte array (undocumented?).
Is there a more elegant way of omitting the structs outer field name?
--
UPDATE To summarise the answers: key is to think about different structs for marshalling and unmarshalling if nothing else works, potentially a using a 3rd presentation for working internally with the data.
When custom (Un)Marshalers come into play remember that promoted fields inherit their methods and hence influence parent structs.
The JSON that you specified has a different model from that of your struct.
There are a few approaches to aligning these: Change the specification of the JSON data to match your structs, change the structs to match the specification of the JSON, or create a new struct that is only used for marshaling.
I omit the last example, because it's very similar to the second method.
Changing the specification of the JSON
The following model stays the same:
type MessageProtocolHandshake struct {
HandshakeType HandshakeType `json:"handshakeType"`
Version []Version `json:"version"`
}
type HandshakeType struct {
HandshakeType string
}
The JSON for this would be:
{"handshakeType":{"HandshakeType":""},"version":[]}
You did not specify the Version type so I don't know how one would change the JSON for that.
Changing the structs
The following JSON stays the same:
{"messageProtocolHandshake":[{"handshakeType":"announceMax"},{"version":[{"major":1},{"minor":0}]}]}
The structs for this would be:
type Model struct {
MessageProtocolHandshake []interface{} `json:"messageProtocolHandshake"`
}
type HandshakeType struct {
HandshakeType string `json:"handshakeType"`
}
type Versions struct {
Version []Version `json:"version"`
}
type Version struct {
Major *int `json:"major,omitempty"`
Minor *int `json:"minor,omitempty"`
}
Unmarshaling would not be trivial.
https://play.golang.org/p/89WUhcMFM0B
As is obvious from the results, the models you are using are not good. If there's a way to change all of this, I would recommend starting from scratch, using the data that is necessary and creating the JSON specification from the structs.
I recommend reading up on JSON: https://www.json.org/json-en.html
Also, I recommend this introduction to Go and JSON: https://blog.golang.org/json

Better way of decoding json values

Assume a JSON object with the general format
"accounts": [
{
"id": "<ACCOUNT>",
"tags": []
}
]
}
I can create a struct with corresponding json tags to decode it like so
type AccountProperties struct {
ID AccountID `json:"id"`
MT4AccountID int `json:"mt4AccountID,omitempty"`
Tags []string `json:"tags"`
}
type Accounts struct {
Accounts []AccountProperties `json:"accounts"`
}
But the last struct with just one element seems incorrect to me. Is there a way I could simply say type Accounts []AccountProperties `json:"accounts"` instead of creating an entire new struct just to decode this object?
You need somewhere to store the json string accounts. Using a:
var m map[string][]AccountProperties
suffices, though of course you then need to know to use the string literal accounts to access the (single) map entry thus created:
type AccountProperties struct {
ID string `json:"id"`
MT4AccountID int `json:"mt4AccountID,omitempty"`
Tags []string `json:"tags"`
}
func main() {
var m map[string][]AccountProperties
err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(data), &m)
fmt.Println(err, m["accounts"])
}
See complete Go Playground example (I had to change the type of ID to string and fix the missing { in the json).
As Dave C points out in comments, this is no shorter than just using an anonymous struct type:
var a struct{ Accounts []AccountProperties }
in terms of the Unmarshall call (and when done this way it's more convenient to use). Should you want to use an anonymous struct like this in a json.Marshall call, you'll need to tag its single element to get a lowercase encoding: without a tag it will be called "Accounts" rather than "accounts".
(I don't claim the map method to be better, just an alternative.)

Conditional (Dynamic) Struct Tags

I'm trying to parse some xml documents in Go. I need to define a few structs for this purpose, and my struct tags depend on a certain condition.
Imagine the following code (even though I know it won't work)
if someCondition {
type MyType struct {
// some common fields
Date []string `xml:"value"`
}
} else {
type MyType struct {
// some common fields
Date []string `xml:"anotherValue"`
}
}
var t MyType
// do the unmarshalling ...
The problem is that these two structs have lots of fields in common. The only difference is in one of the fields and I want to prevent duplication. How can I solve this problem?
You use different types to unmarshal. Basically, you write the unmarshaling code twice and either run the first version or the second. There is no dynamic solution to this.
The simplest is probably to handle all possible fields and do some post-processing.
For example:
type MyType struct {
DateField1 []string `xml:"value"`
DateField2 []string `xml:"anotherValue"`
}
// After parsing, you have two options:
// Option 1: re-assign one field onto another:
if !someCondition {
parsed.DateField1 = parsed.DateField2
parsed.DateField2 = nil
}
// Option 2: use the above as an intermediate struct, the final being:
type MyFinalType struct {
Date []string `xml:"value"`
}
if someCondition {
final.Date = parsed.DateField1
} else {
final.Date = parsed.DateField2
}
Note: if the messages are sufficiently different, you probably want completely different types for parsing. The post-processing can generate the final struct from either.
As already indicated, you must duplicate the field. The question is where the duplication should exist.
If it's just a single field of many, one option is to use embedding, and field shadowing:
type MyType struct {
Date []string `xml:"value"`
// many other fields
}
Then when Date uses the other field name:
type MyOtherType struct {
MyType // Embed the original type for all other fields
Date []string `xml:"anotherValue"`
}
Then after unmarshaling of MyOtherType, it's easy to move the Date value into the original struct:
type data MyOtherType
err := json.Unmarshal(..., &data)
data.MyType.Date = data.Date
return data.MyType // will of MyType, and fully populated
Note that this only works for unmarshaling. If you need to also marshal this data, a similar trick can be used, but the mechanics around it must be essentially reversed.

gorm golang one2many same table

I'm trying to create a self-reference in a (my)sql table using golang gorm. At the moment my code looks like this:
type Person struct {
gorm.Model
Name string
Children []*Person `gorm:"ForeignKey:ParentID"`
ParentID uint
}
func main() {
/* code to get database connection omitted */
p := &Person{Name:"Sally"}
db.Create(p)
children := []*Person{ {Name:"Jane", ParentID:p.ID},
{Name:"Tom", ParentID:p.ID}}
for _, child := range children {
db.Create(child)
}
var children2 []*Person
db.Model(p).Related(children2, "ParentID")
}
The code is failing with an error "reflect.Value.Set using unaddressable value".
Does anybody know how to get this relationship working using go gorm?
Many thanks in advance :)
Fortunately gorm have added lately this feature (reference: here).
In your case should be like this:
type Person struct {
gorm.Model
Name string
Children []*Person `gorm:"many2many: children;association_jointable_foreignkey:children_id"`
}

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