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I would say the most idiomatic way is having defined structs and using encoding/json. Even when you don't know the json schema in advance you can still parse it

I would say the most idiomatic way is having defined structs and using encoding/json. Even when you don't know the json schema in advance you can still parse it into an interface{}. Here's an example: http://play.golang.org/p/jrqBcPuQei http://play.golang.org/p/jrqBcPuQei

mrweasel 12y ago
You can parse JSON into an interface, but you end up doing tiresome casts if you structure is just somewhat nested.
- seletskiy 12y ago
  ...or use very simple lib like this one [1] to access to deep-nested structs using one call. [1] https://github.com/zazab/zhash https://github.com/zazab/zhash
Igglyboo 12y ago
It's definitely safer, but it's a living hell having to define a class for each possible json structure in Java with gson.
- anonfunction 12y ago
  Not sure where Java came into the conversation but I found a service[1] which I find really helpful for generating Golang structs from JSON. There is also a CLI tool[2] that does the same. [1]http://mholt.github.io/json-to-go/ http://mholt.github.io/json-to-go/ [2]https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/gojson https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/gojson
  - eikenberry 12y ago
    Another one. https://github.com/str1ngs/jflect https://github.com/str1ngs/jflect
heavenlyhash 12y ago
I use encoding/json for struct mapping when doing quick prototyping and simple applications. Parsing gets much more interesting when you start supporting many clients, broad version ranges of protocols. At that point, a little flexibility starts to be a godsend. This is just my personal experience, but so far, in every language where I've tried direct struct mappers, they become less and less helpful as your product gains a real user base and you have to start doing compatibility "in the wild". You can certainly do it with encoding/json and custom marshallers, but this library seems like it might be helpful. Protobufs have a lot of features that address this explicitly. I'm not a huge fan of protobufs (for a variety of off-topic reasons), but there's a great deal they got right: forcing consideration of backwards and forwards compatibility early is healthy for a project that's going to keep going for the long haul.

mrweasel 12y ago

You can parse JSON into an interface, but you end up doing tiresome casts if you structure is just somewhat nested.

seletskiy 12y ago
...or use very simple lib like this one [1] to access to deep-nested structs using one call. [1] https://github.com/zazab/zhash https://github.com/zazab/zhash

Igglyboo 12y ago

It's definitely safer, but it's a living hell having to define a class for each possible json structure in Java with gson.

anonfunction 12y ago
Not sure where Java came into the conversation but I found a service[1] which I find really helpful for generating Golang structs from JSON. There is also a CLI tool[2] that does the same. [1]http://mholt.github.io/json-to-go/ http://mholt.github.io/json-to-go/ [2]https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/gojson https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/gojson
- eikenberry 12y ago
  Another one. https://github.com/str1ngs/jflect https://github.com/str1ngs/jflect

heavenlyhash 12y ago

I use encoding/json for struct mapping when doing quick prototyping and simple applications. Parsing gets much more interesting when you start supporting many clients, broad version ranges of protocols. At that point, a little flexibility starts to be a godsend. This is just my personal experience, but so far, in every language where I've tried direct struct mappers, they become less and less helpful as your product gains a real user base and you have to start doing compatibility "in the wild". You can certainly do it with encoding/json and custom marshallers, but this library seems like it might be helpful. Protobufs have a lot of features that address this explicitly. I'm not a huge fan of protobufs (for a variety of off-topic reasons), but there's a great deal they got right: forcing consideration of backwards and forwards compatibility early is healthy for a project that's going to keep going for the long haul.