Learning Go by building an API

So, I wanted to learn Go for a while now and finally found the time to do so. I will attempt to build a simple REST API with Go. Our API will have 2 endpoints.

GET  /quote  # Will return a random inspirational quote
POST /quote  # Will add a new inspirational quote to the database.

Users can submit inspirational quotes to the API when they are feeling inspired. And if users are in need of inspiration they can get a random inspirational quote.

Yes, this API will definitely make the world a better place.

Setting up the project

The first rabbit hole I’m diving into is how to set up a Go project. I found out that most Go programmers have a single workspace in which they store all their projects.

The first step is to set up my workspace ~/.go folder and export the GOPATH variable.

mkdir ~/.go 
export $GOPATH="${HOME}/.go"

Each workspace should have 2 folders.

• ~/.go/src is where the source code is located.
• ~/.go/bin is where the compiled programs are located.

Next, I’m creating the folder for the Quote API project in the ~/.go/src/quote-api folder.