Dynamic JSON schemas in Go (part 1) : optional fields

It is sometimes necessary to work with JSON objects using a dynamic schema : optional fields, fields having dynamic types, …

In this first part, we’ll start with the easy part : generating JSON with optional…

JSON and zero dates in Go

The Go JSON encoder is great (easy to use and easy to extend), except for a tiny thing : zero times which marshal to “0001–01–01T00:00:00Z” instead of something like null. Yuck !

enc := json.NewEncoder(os.Stdout)
enc.Encode(time.Time{}) //…

init() without init() in Go

I like when files are as self-contained as possible, and having to put some init logic elsewhere (e.g. in a package-level init() function) irritates me.

Go does not allow code outside functions, the beginner’s reflex is to put all initialization code in a…

Closing closed channels

A Go channel cannot be closed twice, doing so will panic…

It is obviously better to have a single path managing the lifecycle of a channel, creating the channel at the beginning and closing it at the end, but channels enable interesting signaling patterns where…

Some tips about slices

nil slices are slices

Unlink maps, slices can be used without having been allocated:

• a nil slice has a len and a cap of 0,
• you can append to a nil slice, Go will allocate it,