Following this tutorial I'm trying to read a json file in Golang. It says there are two ways of doing that:
unmarshal the JSON using a set of predefined structs
or unmarshal the JSON using a map[string]interface{}
Since I'll probably have a lot of different json formats I prefer to interpret it on the fly. So I now have the following code:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"os"
"io/ioutil"
"encoding/json"
)
func main() {
// Open our jsonFile
jsonFile, err := os.Open("users.json")
// if we os.Open returns an error then handle it
if err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
}
fmt.Println("Successfully Opened users.json")
// defer the closing of our jsonFile so that we can parse it later on
defer jsonFile.Close()
byteValue, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(jsonFile)
var result map[string]interface{}
json.Unmarshal([]byte(byteValue), &result)
fmt.Println(result["users"])
fmt.Printf("%T\n", result["users"])
}
This prints out:
Successfully Opened users.json
[map[type:Reader age:23 social:map[facebook:https://facebook.com twitter:https://twitter.com] name:Elliot] map[name:Fraser type:Author age:17 social:map[facebook:https://facebook.com twitter:https://twitter.com]]]
[]interface {}
At this point I don't understand how I can read the age of the first user (23). I tried some variations:
fmt.Println(result["users"][0])
fmt.Println(result["users"][0].age)
But apparently, type interface {} does not support indexing.
Is there a way that I can access the items in the json without defining the structure?
Probably you want
fmt.Println(result["users"].(map[string]interface{})["age"])
or
fmt.Println(result[0].(map[string]interface{})["age"])
As the JSON is a map of maps the type of the leaf nodes is interface{} and so has to be converted to map[string]interface{} in order to lookup a key
Defining a struct is much easier. My top tip for doing this is to use a website that converts JSON to a Go struct definition, like Json-To-Go
Related
In powershell, if I make a REST call and receive any kind of json response, I can easily $json | ConvertFrom-Json into a proper object so I can make modifications, render specific values, whatever.
It seems like in Go I have to either define a struct, or "dynamically" convert using a map[string]interface{}.
The issue with a struct is that I am writing a rest handler for a platform that, depending on the endpoint, serves wildly different JSON responses, like most REST APIs. I don't want to define a struct for all of the dozens of possible responses.
The problem with map[string]interface{} is that it pollutes the data by generating a string with a bunch of ridiculous 'map' prefixes and unwanted [brackets].
ala: [map[current_user_role:admin id:1]]
Is there a way to convert a JSON response like:
{
"current_user_role": "admin",
"id": 1
}
To return a basic:
current_user_role: admin
id: 1
... WITHOUT defining a struct?
Your approach of using a map is right if you don't wish to specify the structure of the data you're receiving. You don't like how it is output from fmt.Println, but I suspect you're confusing the output format with the data representation. Printing them out in the format you find acceptable takes a couple of lines of code, and is not as convenient as in python or powershell, which you may find annoying.
Here's a working example (playground link):
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"log"
)
var data = []byte(`{
"current_user_role": "admin",
"id": 1
}`)
func main() {
var a map[string]interface{}
if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &a); err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
for k, v := range a {
fmt.Printf("%s: %v\n", k, v)
}
}
I am new to golang and json and currently struggle to parse the json out from a system.
I've read a couple of blog posts on dynamic json in go and also tried the tools like json2GoStructs
Parsing my json file with this tools just gave me a huge structs which I found a bit messy. Also I had no idea how to get the info im interested in.
So, here are my problems:
How do I get to the info I am interested in?
What is the best approach to parse complex json?
I am only interested into the following 3 json fields:
Name
Guid
Task -> Property -> Name: Error
I'm thankful for every tip, code snippet or explanation!
This is what I got so far (mostly from a tutorial):
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"io/ioutil"
)
func checkErr(err error) {
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
}
func readFile(filePath string) []byte {
data, err := ioutil.ReadFile(filePath)
checkErr(err)
return data
}
func main() {
path := "/Users/andi/Documents/tmp/wfsJob.json"
data := readFile(path)
var f interface{}
err := json.Unmarshal(data, &f)
checkErr(err)
m := f.(map[string]interface{})
for k, v := range m {
switch vv := v.(type) {
case string:
fmt.Println(k, "is string", vv)
case int:
fmt.Println(k, "is int", vv)
case []interface{}:
fmt.Println(k, "is an array:")
for i, u := range vv {
fmt.Println(i, u)
}
default:
fmt.Println(k, "is of a type I don't know how to handle")
}
}
}
I can offer you this easy way to using JSON in Golang. With this tool you don't need to parse the whole json file, and you can use it without struct.
Gjson is a great solution for fetching a few fields from JSON string. But it may become slow when many (more than 2) fields must be fetched from distinct parts of the JSON, since it re-parses the JSON on each Get call. Additionally, it requires calling gjson.Valid for validating the incoming JSON, since other methods assume the caller provides valid JSON.
There is an alternative package - fastjson. Like gsjon, it is fast and has nice API. Unlike gjson it validates the input JSON and works faster when many unrelated fields must be obtained from the JSON. Here is a sample code for obtaining fields from the original question:
var p fastjson.Parser
v, err := p.ParseBytes(data)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
fmt.Printf("Name: %s", v.GetStringBytes("Name"))
fmt.Printf("Guid: %s", v.GetStringBytes("Guid"))
fmt.Printf("Error: %s", v.GetStringBytes("Task", "Property", "Name"))
I am trying to parse a json from a third party software. It returns a json like this
{
"top1/dir1": "10",
"top1/dir2": "20",
"top1/dir3": "30",
"top2/diff_val1": "40"
}
JSONLint says this is a valid json. But I could not figure how I can parse this with golang.
The code I used to parse the json file above (to be clear I took the code from another stackoverflow post).
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"io/ioutil"
"log"
)
type mytype []map[string]string
func main() {
var data mytype
file, err := ioutil.ReadFile("t1.json")
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
err = json.Unmarshal(file, &data)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
fmt.Println(data)
}
When I do a go run main.go, I get the below error
$ go run main.go
2016/06/19 22:53:57 json: cannot unmarshal object into Go value of type main.mytype
exit status 1
I did try to parse this format with another library - "github.com/Jeffail/gabs", but was unsuccessful. Since this is a valid json, I am pretty sure this can be parsed, but I am not sure how.
There is a Go package with methods for decoding JSON strings.
https://golang.org/pkg/encoding/json/#Unmarshal
Here is an example of usage:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
)
func main() {
var jsonBlob = []byte(`[
{"Name": "Platypus", "Order": "Monotremata"},
{"Name": "Quoll", "Order": "Dasyuromorphia"}
]`)
type Animal struct {
Name string
Order string
}
var animals []Animal
err := json.Unmarshal(jsonBlob, &animals)
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("error:", err)
}
fmt.Printf("%+v", animals)
}
EDIT: As pointed out by Malik, the type of the value whose pointer you pass is wrong. In this case, your type should be map[string]interface{} (preferably, because a JSON field might not store a string) or map[string]string instead of []map[string]string. The brackets at the beginning are wrong: such would be an array of JSON objects.
It's just that you have a small typo in your program. You've declared mytype as a slice of maps, rather than just a map.
Just change:
type mytype []map[string]string
To:
type mytype map[string]string
See https://play.golang.org/p/pZQl8jV5TC for an example.
Jonathan's answer provides a good example of decoding JSON, and links the relevant package. You don't provide much detail on what exactly is going wrong with your parsing, but if I had to take a guess I would say you're probably not creating an appropriate struct to contain the JSON once it is unmarshalled. Because Go is statically typed, it expects data to adhere to explicitly defined formats.
If you don't want to go to the trouble of defining structs, you could just use an empty interface object, which is sort of a catch all in Go. Simply declare a variable with the type []interface{}, and then pass it into the JSON unmarshal function. Hope this helps!
I'm trying to work out a bit of code to pull in config from a JSON file.
When I attempt to build, I get this error
type ConfigVars is not an expression
Below is the config and program code I'm trying to work with. Every example I've found so far is similar to the below code. Any suggestion of what I'm doing incorrectly?
-- Config File
{"beaconUrl":"http://test.com/?id=1"}
-- Program Code
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"os"
)
type ConfigVars struct {
BeaconUrl string
}
func main() {
configFile, err := os.Open("config.json")
defer configFile.Close()
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("Opening config file", err.Error())
}
jsonParser := json.NewDecoder(configFile)
if err = jsonParser.Decode(&ConfigVars); err != nil {
fmt.Println("Parsing config file", err.Error())
}
}
What you're doing there is trying to pass a pointer to the ConfigVars type (which obviously doesn't really mean anything). What you want to do is make a variable whose type is ConfigVars and pass a pointer to that instead:
var cfg ConfigVars
err = jsonParser.Decode(&cfg)
...
For others who come onto this problem, you may find that you've forgotten to initialize the variable during assignment using the := operator, as described in Point 3 at the end of this GoLang tutorial.
var cfg ConfigVars
err := jsonParser.Decode(&cfg)
I have a json document and I'm using a client which decodes the document in an interface (instead of struct) as below:
var jsonR interface{}
err = json.Unmarshal(res, &jsonR)
How can I access the interface fields? I've read the go doc and blog but my head still can't get it. Their example seem to show only that you can decode the json in an interface but doesn't explain how its fields can be used.
I've tried to use a range loop but it seems the story ends when I reach a map[string]interface. The fields that I need seem to be in the interface.
for k, v := range jsonR {
if k == "topfield" {
fmt.Printf("k is %v, v is %v", k, v)
}
}
The value inside the interface depends on the json structure you're parsing. If you have a json dictionary, the dynamic type of jsonR will be: map[string]interface{}.
Here's an example.
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"log"
)
func main() {
a := []byte(`{"topfield": 123}`)
var v interface{}
if err := json.Unmarshal(a, &v); err != nil {
log.Fatalf("unmarshal failed: %s", err)
}
fmt.Printf("value is %v", v.(map[string]interface{})["topfield"])
}
Parsing json like this can be very difficult. The default type of a parse is map[string]interface{}. The Problem arises when you have another complex data structure within the main json(like another list or object). The best way to go about decoding json is defining a struct to hold data. Not only will the values be of the correct type but you can extract the specific data you actually care about.
Your struct can look like this:
type Top struct {
Topfield int `json:"topfield"`
}
which can be decoded like this:
a := []byte(`{"topfield": 123}`)
var data Top
json.Unmarshal(a, &data) //parse the json into data
now you can use regular struct operations to access your data like this:
value := data.Topfield
json which contains more complex data can also be easyli decoded. Perhaps you have a list in your data somewhere, you can use a struct like the following to extract it:
type Data struct {
States []string `json:"states"`
PopulationData []Country `json:"popdata"`
}
type Country struct {
Id int `json:"id"`
LastCensusPop int `json:"lcensuspopulation"`
Gdp float64 `json:"gdp"`
}
such a structure can not only parse list but also parse objects withing fields.