Go - Modify JSON on the fly - json

Considering the following input:
"object": {
"array": [
{
"element_field_1": some_value_1,
"element_field_2": some_value_1,
... // More unknown fields
},
...
],
"object_field": foo,
... // Some more unknown fields
}
I need to iterate over every element of the array, modify fields 1 and 2 and then output the JSON object. Here's what I have for now, but it is far from being valid Go code:
func handler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
// Transform the request's body to an interface
j := getDecodedJSON(r)
// Iterate over every element of the array
for i := 0; i < len(j["object"]["array"]); i++ {
rewrite(j["object"]["array"][i])
}
// Encoding back to JSON shouldn't be a problem
}
func getDecodedJSON(r *http.Request) map[string]interface{} {
dec := json.NewDecoder(r.Body)
var j map[string]interface{}
if err := dec.Decode(&j); err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
return j
}
func rewrite(element *map[string]interface{}) {
element["element_field_1"], element["element_field_2"] = lookupValues(element)
}
Basically the error is:
invalid operation: j["object"]["array"] \
(type interface {} does not support indexing)
but of course there's a more conceptual mistake on my approach.
Writing a struct that details the content of the input isn't really an option, since I don't know the JSON keys beforehand.
How can I do this "the Go way"?
EDIT: This is the actual use case:
I have two web services that need a "translator" between them.
Service 1 makes a request to the translator, where a couple of fields are modified, everything else is left intact.
Then the translator takes the modified JSON and replicates the request to service 2.
In other words, this translator acts like a man in the middle for both services. Go seems to be a good option for this given its fast startup times and fast JSON handling.
I don't think it makes sense to detail every JSON field in a Go struct, since I only need to change a few fields. I'm willing to make a tradeoff in efficiency because of reflection (parsing to a map[string]interface{} should be slower than using a full-blown struct), in exchange of making the code more generic to variations of the JSON input.

Change
j["object"]["array"][i]
to
j["object"].(map[string]interface{})["array"].([]interface{})[i]

Related

Go: How do I pass a JSON response without unmarshalling it

Using Go, I'm attempting to fetch a few JSON responses concurrently from multiple endpoints. I'd like to attach each of these responses to fields in a struct or map and return this struct/map as a JSON object. (Backend for Frontend pattern). So I will make a web request to the Go application with some sort of identifier. It will in turn make several web requests, and compile the data into one large object to return as a response.
I'm using Fiber as my framework but any generic web framework would be similar:
app.Get("/requests/:identifier", func(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
identifier := c.Params("identifier")
timeout := 1600 * time.Millisecond
client := httpclient.NewClient(httpclient.WithHTTPTimeout(timeout))
res, err := client.Get("https://www.example.com/endpoint?id=" + identifier, nil)
if err != nil{
logger.Error("Timout value exceeded")
return c.Status(503).SendString("Socket Timeout")
}
logger.Info("Fetch success: ")
// Heimdall returns the standard *http.Response object
body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(res.Body)
code := 200
response := &main_response{
Service1: body,
}
return c.Status(code).JSON(response)
})
The problem I'm having is, I have no need to unmarshal this data in Go, as I have no use for it (I am simply passing it along). Do I have to unmarshal it just so I can set it as a field in my response struct like this?
type main_response struct {
Service1 []byte `json:"service1"`
Service2 map[string]string `json:"service2"`
Service3 map[string]interface{} `json:"service3"`
}
(I've tried a few different ways to accomplish this. Trying to use a byte array seems to base64 encode the responses)
I will want to marshal that struct to JSON before returning it, so perhaps I have little choice as I can't think of a way to tell Go "only marshal the main struct, everything else is already JSON". It almost feels like I'd be better off building a string at this point.
Use json.RawMessage to copy a []byte containing JSON directly to the response JSON document:
type main_response struct {
Service1 json.RawMessage `json:"service1"`
...
}
response := &main_response{
Service1: body,
}
return c.Status(code).JSON(response)

go JSON nightmare - Is there a simple [POSH] ConvertFrom-Json equivalent?

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)
}
}

Print POST JSON data

I have an issue printing the JSON from the POST.
I use gorilla/mux for routing
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/test", Point).Methods("POST")
http.ListenAndServe(":80", r)`
and in Point function I have
func Point(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
var callback Decoder
json.NewDecoder(r.Body).Decode(&callback)
}
But I can use this method only when I know the structure and I want to figure out how to log.Print the whole JSON as a string. I tried
func Point(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
r.ParseForm()
log.Println(r.Form)
}
But it prints an empty map. Please help to figure out this.
In the assumption that you are building a standard API endpoint which receives some JSON and you would like to do something with it you should approach it the following way.
Edit:
As mentioned in the comments when you use the ioutil.ReadAll()
function as in this example it will read everything that is sent in the
post request into the application memory. It's a good idea to check
this in a production application (e.g limiting payload size).
1.) Make a struct which will hold the data coming from an API post request in GoLang
2.) Convert your request body into a byte array []byte
3.) Unmarshal your []byte into a single instance of your struct made earlier.
I'll put an example below:
1. Make a struct which you'll put your JSON into.
Let's take an example of a simple blog post.
The JSON object looks like this and has a slug, a title, and description
{
"slug": "test-slug",
"title": "This is the title",
"body": "This is the body of the page"
}
So your struct would look like this:
type Page struct {
Slug string `json:"slug"`
Title string `json:"title"`
Body string `json:"body"`
}
2 - 3. Get the body of your request and convert it to byte[] Then take that string and Unmarshal it into an instance of your struct.
The data of a post request is the request 'Body'.
In Golang the request in almost all cases (unless you're using something fancy outside of the defaults) will be an http.Request object. This is the 'r' which you normally have in your normal code and it holds the 'Body' of our POST request.
import (
"encoding/json"
"github.com/go-chi/chi" // you can remove
"github.com/go-chi/render" // you can remove but be sure to remove where it is used as well below.
"io/ioutil"
"net/http"
)
func GiveMeAPage(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
w.Write([]byte("A page"))
}
So what we are going to do here is convert an io.ReadCloser, which is what the http.Request.Body is, to a []byte as the Unmarshal function takes a []byte type. I've commented inline below for you.
func Create(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
var p Page //Create an instance of our struct
//Read all the data in r.Body from a byte[], convert it to a string, and assign store it in 's'.
s, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r.Body)
if err != nil {
panic(err) // This would normally be a normal Error http response but I've put this here so it's easy for you to test.
}
// use the built in Unmarshal function to put the string we got above into the empty page we created at the top. Notice the &p. The & is important, if you don't understand it go and do the 'Tour of Go' again.
err = json.Unmarshal(s, &p)
if err != nil {
panic(err) // This would normally be a normal Error http response but I've put this here so it's easy for you to test.
}
// From here you have a proper Page object which is filled. Do what you want with it.
render.JSON(w, r, p) // This is me using a useful helper function from go-chi which 'Marshals' a struct to a json string and returns it to using the http.ResponseWriter.
}
As a side note. Please don't use Decoder to parse JSON unless you are using JSON streams. You are not here, and it's unlikely you will
for a while. You can read about why that is
here
If you just want the raw JSON data without parsing it, http.Request.Body implements io.Reader, so you can just Read from it. For example with ioutil.ReadAll.
Something like (untested):
func Point(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
data, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r.Body)
// check error
// do whatever you want with the raw data (you can `json.Unmarshal` it too)
}

Unmarshalling Entities from multiple JSON arrays without using reflect or duplicating code

I'm making an JSON API wrapper client that needs to fetch paginated results, where the URL to the next page is provided by the previous page. To reduce code duplication for the 100+ entities that share the same response format, I would like to have a single client method that fetches and unmarshalls the different entities from all paginated pages.
My current approach in a simplified (pseudo) version (without errors etc):
type ListResponse struct {
Data struct {
Results []interface{} `json:"results"`
Next string `json:"__next"`
} `json:"d"`
}
func (c *Client) ListRequest(uri string) listResponse ListResponse {
// Do a http request to uri and get the body
body := []byte(`{ "d": { "__next": "URL", "results": []}}`)
json.NewDecoder(body).Decode(&listResponse)
}
func (c *Client) ListRequestAll(uri string, v interface{}) {
a := []interface{}
f := c.ListRequest(uri)
a = append(a, f.Data.Results...)
var next = f.Data.Next
for next != "" {
r := c.ListRequest(next)
a = append(a, r.Data.Results...)
next = r.Data.Next
}
b, _ := json.Marshal(a)
json.Unmarshal(b, v)
}
// Then in a method requesting all results for a single entity
var entities []Entity1
client.ListRequestAll("https://foo.bar/entities1.json", &entities)
// and somewehere else
var entities []Entity2
client.ListRequestAll("https://foo.bar/entities2.json", &entities)
The problem however is that this approach is inefficient and uses too much memory etc, ie first Unmarshalling in a general ListResponse with results as []interface{} (to see the next URL and concat the results into a single slice), then marshalling the []interface{} for unmarshalling it directly aftwards in the destination slice of []Entity1.
I might be able to use the reflect package to dynamically make new slices of these entities, directly unmarshal into them and concat/append them afterwards, however if I understand correctly I better not use reflect unless strictly necessary...
Take a look at the RawMessage type in the encoding/json package. It allows you to defer the decoding of json values until later. For example:
Results []json.RawMessage `json:"results"`
or even...
Results json.RawMessage `json:"results"`
Since json.RawMessage is just a slice of bytes this will be much more efficient then the intermediate []interface{} you are unmarshalling to.
As for the second part on how to assemble these into a single slice given multiple page reads you could punt that question to the caller by making the caller use a slice of slices type.
// Then in a method requesting all results for a single entity
var entityPages [][]Entity1
client.ListRequestAll("https://foo.bar/entities1.json", &entityPages)
This still has the unbounded memory consumption problem your general design has, however, since you have to load all of the pages / items at once. You might want to consider changing to an Open/Read abstraction like working with files. You'd have some Open method that returns another type that, like os.File, provides a method for reading a subset of data at a time, while internally requesting pages and buffering as needed.
Perhaps something like this (untested):
type PagedReader struct {
c *Client
buffer []json.RawMessage
next string
}
func (r *PagedReader) getPage() {
f := r.c.ListRequest(r.next)
r.next = f.Data.Next
r.buffer = append(r.buffer, f.Data.Results...)
}
func (r *PagedReader) ReadItems(output []interface{}) int {
for len(output) > len(buffer) && r.next != "" {
r.getPage()
}
n := 0
for i:=0;i<len(output)&&i< len(r.buffer);i++ {
json.Unmarshal(r.buffer[i], output[i] )
n++
}
r.buffer = r.buffer[n:]
return n
}

How to insert array of objects into MongoDB using Go

I have JSON from an API that I want to save to MongoDB using the mgo package. My JSON looks like this:
{
"something": "value"
"collection": [
{ "obj1": "value" }
// ... (Variable number of objects here)
]
}
To save this data I've created a new type in my Go application that looks like this:
type MyData struct {
Something string
Collection []string // This actually contains more than strings but I'll be happy if I can just get strings saved
}
mongoSess, err := mgo.Dial("localhost:27017")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
defer mongoSess.Close()
c := mongoSess.DB("mydatabase").C("mycollection")
insertErr := c.Insert(&MyData{something, collection})
This code works but the problem is that it isn't saving anything in my collection field which should be an array of JSON objects. Nothing at all. I get the keys in my database and they are the right type but they have no data. Here's what the Mongo output is:
{ "_id" : ObjectId("5520c535a236d8a9a215d096"), "something" : "value", "collection" : [ ] }
Can anyone spot what it is I'm doing wrong? I'm obviously new to Go and having trouble with types.
Solution
The answers here really helped me a lot. I'm at fault for not properly explaining things as the answers sent me on the right track but didn't solve the issue directly. Here's what the actual solution is.
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"github.com/bitly/go-simplejson"
"gopkg.in/mgo.v2"
//"gopkg.in/mgo.v2/bson"
// Other packages are used as well
)
type MyData struct {
Something int
Collection []interface{}
}
func main() {
// I'm using SimpleJson for parsing JSON
collection, cerr := jsonFromExternalApi.Get("collection").Array()
if cerr != nil {
logger.Debug.Fatalln(cerr)
}
// Save response to Mongo (leaving out all the connection code)
c := mongoSess.DB("mydb").C("mycollection")
insertErr := c.Insert(&Producer{npn, licenses })
}
The issue was that SimpleJSON was returning the array of objects from my API call as a []interface{}. I was not aware I could simply declare part of a struct to be an interface so instead of just correcting what Go's compiler was telling me was wrong I was making it way harder than it should have been.
Coming from loosely typed scripting languages, stuff like this really trips me up and sometimes its hard to see the benefit but hopefully this helps someone out one day.
Looks you have the wrong data structure.
insertErr := c.Insert(&MyData{something, collection})
something => string and collection => slice
You code should be like this:
insertErr := c.Insert(&MyData{"something", []string{"obj1", "value"}})
Here is the working code.
[{Something:something Collection:[obj1 value]} {Something:something Collection:[obj1 value]} {Something:something Collection:[obj1 value]} {Something:something Collection:[obj1 value]}]
For further reference, mgo has great documentation and you can find sample code and details about running mongodb queries here.
Here you are not defining proper type to Collection in your MyData struct.
Collection []string //This is what you are defining.
But from Json you are not getting string array,you are getting map[string]interface{}
This is the reason you are not filling Mydata struct properly
Correct MyData struct will be
type MyData struct {
Something string
Collection map[string]string // This actually contains more than strings but I'll be happy if I can just get strings saved
}