Building a RESTful API in Go: Step-by-Step Guide

Go (Golang) is an excellent choice for building RESTful APIs due to its performance, concurrency support, and simplicity. In this guide, we’ll walk through creating a RESTful API from scratch using Go’s net/http package and the Echo framework.

1. Setting Up the Go Project

Before we start, make sure you have Go installed. You can check by running:

go version

Initialize a Go Module

mkdir go-rest-api && cd go-rest-api
go mod init github.com/yourname/go-rest-api

2. Creating a Simple API with net/http

Go’s standard library provides the net/http package, which is great for building lightweight APIs.

Basic API with net/http

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"net/http"
}

type Message struct {
	Message string `json:"message"`
}

func helloHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
	json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(Message{Message: "Hello, World!"})
}

func main() {
	http.HandleFunc("/hello", helloHandler)
	http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

Run the API:

go run main.go

Visit http://localhost:8080/hello to see the JSON response.

3. Using Echo for a More Robust API