Unmarshaling string encoded json ints with nulls uses previous value when null - json

I am trying to unmarshal json that contains ints encoded as strings. Using tags to specify that the field is encoded as a string works, but I am running into issues when the field is null. The main problem, it seems, is that the null is not encoded as a string so the parser ignores it and keeps going. The problem is that it jams in the previously decoded value for some reason.
Any ideas on how I can get this parsing correctly?
I have the following code:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"log"
)
type Product struct {
Price int `json:",string,omitempty"`
}
func main() {
data := `
[
{"price": "1"},
{"price": null},
{"price": "2"}
]
`
var products []Product
if err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(data), &products); err != nil {
log.Printf("%#v", err)
}
log.Printf("%#v", products)
}
Output:
[]main.Product{main.Product{Price:1}, main.Product{Price:1}, main.Product{Price:2}}
Code on go playground

Feels like a bug in the json package.
You can work around it with a custom Unmarshaller, like this, although it may be annoying if you've got a complex struct:
func (p *Product) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) error {
m := map[string]string{}
err := json.Unmarshal(b, &m)
if err != nil {
return err
}
if priceStr, ok := m["price"]; ok {
p.Price, _ = strconv.Atoi(priceStr)
}
return nil
}
http://play.golang.org/p/UKjfVqHCGi

Related

Unmarshaling from JSON key containing a single quote

I feel quite puzzled by this.
I need to load some data (coming from a French database) that is serialized in JSON and in which some keys have a single quote.
Here is a simplified version:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
)
type Product struct {
Name string `json:"nom"`
Cost int64 `json:"prix d'achat"`
}
func main() {
var p Product
err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(`{"nom":"savon", "prix d'achat": 170}`), &p)
fmt.Printf("product cost: %d\nerror: %s\n", p.Cost, err)
}
// product cost: 0
// error: %!s(<nil>)
Unmarshaling leads to no errors however the "prix d'achat" (p.Cost) is not correctly parsed.
When I unmarshal into a map[string]any, the "prix d'achat" key is parsed as I would expect:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
)
func main() {
blob := map[string]any{}
err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(`{"nom":"savon", "prix d'achat": 170}`), &blob)
fmt.Printf("blob: %f\nerror: %s\n", blob["prix d'achat"], err)
}
// blob: 170.000000
// error: %!s(<nil>)
I checked the json.Marshal documentation on struct tags and I cannot find any issue with the data I'm trying to process.
Am I missing something obvious here?
How can I parse a JSON key containing a single quote using struct tags?
Thanks a lot for any insight!
I didn't find anything in the documentation, but the JSON encoder considers single quote to be a reserved character in tag names.
func isValidTag(s string) bool {
if s == "" {
return false
}
for _, c := range s {
switch {
case strings.ContainsRune("!#$%&()*+-./:;<=>?#[]^_{|}~ ", c):
// Backslash and quote chars are reserved, but
// otherwise any punctuation chars are allowed
// in a tag name.
case !unicode.IsLetter(c) && !unicode.IsDigit(c):
return false
}
}
return true
}
I think opening an issue is justified here. In the meantime, you're going to have to implement json.Unmarshaler and/or json.Marshaler. Here is a start:
func (p *Product) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) error {
type product Product // revent recursion
var _p product
if err := json.Unmarshal(b, &_p); err != nil {
return err
}
*p = Product(_p)
return unmarshalFieldsWithSingleQuotes(p, b)
}
func unmarshalFieldsWithSingleQuotes(dest interface{}, b []byte) error {
// Look through the JSON tags. If there is one containing single quotes,
// unmarshal b again, into a map this time. Then unmarshal the value
// at the map key corresponding to the tag, if any.
var m map[string]json.RawMessage
t := reflect.TypeOf(dest).Elem()
v := reflect.ValueOf(dest).Elem()
for i := 0; i < t.NumField(); i++ {
tag := t.Field(i).Tag.Get("json")
if !strings.Contains(tag, "'") {
continue
}
if m == nil {
if err := json.Unmarshal(b, &m); err != nil {
return err
}
}
if j, ok := m[tag]; ok {
if err := json.Unmarshal(j, v.Field(i).Addr().Interface()); err != nil {
return err
}
}
}
return nil
}
Try it on the playground: https://go.dev/play/p/aupACXorjOO

handle unstructured JSON data using the standard Go unmarshaller

Some context, I'm designing a backend that will receive JSON post data, but the nature of the data is that it has fields that are unstructured. My general research tells me this is a static language vs unstructured data problem.
Normally if you can create a struct for it if the data is well known and just unmarshal into the struct. I have create custom unmarshaling functions for nested objects.
The issue now is that one of the fields could contain an object with an arbitrary number of keys. To provide some code context:
properties: {
"k1": "v1",
"k2": "v2",
"k3": "v3",
...
}
type Device struct {
id: string,
name: string,
status: int,
properties: <what would i put here?>
}
So its hard to code an explicit unmarshaling function for it. Should put a type of map[string]string{}? How would it work if the values were not all strings then? And what if that object itself had nested values/objects as well?
You can make the Properties field as map[string]interface{} so that it can accommodate different types of values.I created a small code for your scenario as follows:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
)
type Device struct {
Id string
Name string
Status int
Properties map[string]interface{}
}
func main() {
devObj := Device{}
data := []byte(`{"Id":"101","Name":"Harold","Status":1,"properties":{"key1":"val1"}}`)
if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &devObj); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Println(devObj)
devObj2 := Device{}
data2 := []byte(`{"Id":"102","Name":"Thanor","Status":1,"properties":{"k1":25,"k2":"someData"}}`)
if err := json.Unmarshal(data2, &devObj2); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Println(devObj2)
devObj3 := Device{}
data3 := []byte(`{"Id":"101","Name":"GreyBeard","Status":1,"properties":{"k1":25,"k2":["data1","data2"]}}`)
if err := json.Unmarshal(data3, &devObj3); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Println(devObj3)
}
Output:
{101 Harold 1 map[key1:val1]}
{102 Thanor 1 map[k1:25 k2:someData]}
{101 GreyBeard 1 map[k1:25 k2:[data1 data2]]}
I would use one of the popular Go JSON parsers that don't require parsing to a pre-defined struct. An added benefit, and the primary reason they were created, is that they are much faster than encoding/json because they don't use reflection, interface{} or certain other approaches.
Here are two:
https://github.com/buger/jsonparser - 4.1k GitHub stars
https://github.com/valyala/fastjson - 1.3k GitHub stars
Using github.com/buger/jsonparser, a property could be retrieved using the GetString function:
func GetString(data []byte, keys ...string) (val string, err error)
Here's a full example:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"strconv"
"github.com/buger/jsonparser"
)
func main() {
jsondata := []byte(`
{
"properties": {
"k1": "v1",
"k2": "v2",
"k3": "v3"
}
}`)
for i := 1; i > 0; i++ {
key := "k" + strconv.Itoa(i)
val, err := jsonparser.GetString(jsondata, "properties", key)
if err == jsonparser.KeyPathNotFoundError {
break
} else if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Printf("found: key [%s] val [%s]\n", key, val)
}
}
See it run on Go Playground: https://play.golang.org/p/ykAM4gac8zT

Read extern JSON file

I am trying to read the following JSON file:
{
"a":1,
"b":2,
"c":3
}
I have tried this but I found that I had to write each field of the JSON file into a struct but I really don't want to have all my JSON file in my Go code.
import (
"fmt"
"encoding/json"
"io/ioutil"
)
type Data struct {
A string `json:"a"`
B string `json:"b"`
C string `json:"c"`
}
func main() {
file, _ := ioutil.ReadFile("/path/to/file.json")
data := Data{}
if err := json.Unmarshal(file ,&data); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for _, letter := range data.Letter {
fmt.Println(letter)
}
}
Is there a way to bypass this thing with something like json.load(file) in Python?
If you only want to support integer values, you could unmarshal your data into a map[string]int. Note that the order of a map is not defined, so the below program's output is non-deterministic for the input.
package main
import (
"fmt"
"encoding/json"
"io/ioutil"
)
func main() {
file, _ := ioutil.ReadFile("/path/to/file.json")
var data map[string]int
if err := json.Unmarshal(file ,&data); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
for letter := range data {
fmt.Println(letter)
}
}
You can unmarshal any JSON data in this way:
var data interface{}
if err := json.Unmarshal(..., &data); err != nil {
// handle error
}
Though, in this way you should handle all the reflection-related stuffs
since you don't know what type the root data is, and its fields.
Even worse, your data might not be map at all.
It can be any valid JSON data type like array, string, integer, etc.
Here's a playground link: https://play.golang.org/p/DiceOv4sATO
It's impossible to do anything as simple as in Python, because Go is strictly typed, so it's necessary to pass your target into the unmarshal function.
What you've written could otherwise be shortened, slightly, to something like this:
func UnmarshalJSONFile(path string, i interface{}) error {
f, err := os.Open(path)
if err != nil {
return err
}
defer f.Close()
return json.NewDecoder(f).Decode(i)
}
But then to use it, you would do this:
func main() {
data := Data{}
if err := UnmarshalJSONFile("/path/to/file.json", &data); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
}
But you can see that the UnmarshalJSONFile is so simple, it hardly warrants a standard library function.

Go: Converting JSON string to map[string]interface{}

I'm trying to create a JSON representation within Go using a map[string]interface{} type. I'm dealing with JSON strings and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to avoid the JSON unmarshaler to automatically deal with numbers as float64s. As a result the following error occurs.
Ex.
"{ 'a' : 9223372036854775807}" should be map[string]interface{} = [a 9223372036854775807 but in reality it is map[string]interface{} = [a 9.2233720368547758088E18]
I searched how structs can be used to avoid this by using json.Number but I'd really prefer using the map type designated above.
The go json.Unmarshal(...) function automatically uses float64 for JSON numbers. If you want to unmarshal numbers into a different type then you'll have to use a custom type with a custom unmarshaler. There is no way to force the unmarshaler to deserialize custom values into a generic map.
For example, here's how you could parse values of the "a" property as a big.Int.
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"math/big"
)
type MyDoc struct {
A BigA `json:"a"`
}
type BigA struct{ *big.Int }
func (a BigA) UnmarshalJSON(bs []byte) error {
_, ok := a.SetString(string(bs), 10)
if !ok {
return fmt.Errorf("invalid integer %s", bs)
}
return nil
}
func main() {
jsonstr := `{"a":9223372036854775807}`
mydoc := MyDoc{A: BigA{new(big.Int)}}
err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(jsonstr), &mydoc)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
fmt.Printf("OK: mydoc=%#v\n", mydoc)
// OK: mydoc=main.MyDoc{A:9223372036854775807}
}
func jsonToMap(jsonStr string) map[string]interface{} {
result := make(map[string]interface{})
json.Unmarshal([]byte(jsonStr), &result)
return result
}
Example - https://goplay.space/#ra7Gv8A5Heh
Related questions - create a JSON data as map[string]interface with the given data

How to tell the client they need to send an integer instead of a string, from a Go server?

Let's say I have the following Go struct on the server
type account struct {
Name string
Balance int
}
I want to call json.Decode on the incoming request to parse it into an account.
var ac account
err := json.NewDecoder(r.Body).Decode(&ac)
If the client sends the following request:
{
"name": "test#example.com",
"balance": "3"
}
Decode() will return the following error:
json: cannot unmarshal string into Go value of type int
Now it's possible to parse that back into "you sent a string for Balance, but you really should have sent an integer", but it's tricky, because you don't know the field name. It also gets a lot trickier if you have a lot of fields in the request - you don't know which one failed to parse.
What's the best way to take that incoming request, in Go, and return the error message, "Balance must be a string", for any arbitrary number of integer fields on a request?
You can use a custom type with custom unmarshaling algorythm for your "Balance" field.
Now there are two possibilities:
Handle both types:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"strconv"
)
type Int int
type account struct {
Name string
Balance Int
}
func (i *Int) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) (err error) {
var s string
err = json.Unmarshal(b, &s)
if err == nil {
var n int
n, err = strconv.Atoi(s)
if err != nil {
return
}
*i = Int(n)
return
}
var n int
err = json.Unmarshal(b, &n)
if err == nil {
*i = Int(n)
}
return
}
func main() {
for _, in := range [...]string{
`{"Name": "foo", "Balance": 42}`,
`{"Name": "foo", "Balance": "111"}`,
} {
var a account
err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(in), &a)
if err != nil {
fmt.Printf("Error decoding JSON: %v\n", err)
} else {
fmt.Printf("Decoded OK: %v\n", a)
}
}
}
Playground link.
Handle only a numeric type, and fail anything else with a sensible error:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
)
type Int int
type account struct {
Name string
Balance Int
}
type FormatError struct {
Want string
Got string
Offset int64
}
func (fe *FormatError) Error() string {
return fmt.Sprintf("Invalid data format at %d: want: %s, got: %s",
fe.Offset, fe.Want, fe.Got)
}
func (i *Int) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) (err error) {
var n int
err = json.Unmarshal(b, &n)
if err == nil {
*i = Int(n)
return
}
if ute, ok := err.(*json.UnmarshalTypeError); ok {
err = &FormatError{
Want: "number",
Got: ute.Value,
Offset: ute.Offset,
}
}
return
}
func main() {
for _, in := range [...]string{
`{"Name": "foo", "Balance": 42}`,
`{"Name": "foo", "Balance": "111"}`,
} {
var a account
err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(in), &a)
if err != nil {
fmt.Printf("Error decoding JSON: %#v\n", err)
fmt.Printf("Error decoding JSON: %v\n", err)
} else {
fmt.Printf("Decoded OK: %v\n", a)
}
}
}
Playground link.
There is a third possibility: write custom unmarshaler for the whole account type, but it requires more involved code because you'd need to actually iterate over the input JSON data using the methods of the
encoding/json.Decoder type.
After reading your
What's the best way to take that incoming request, in Go, and return the error message, "Balance must be a string", for any arbitrary number of integer fields on a request?
more carefully, I admit having a custom parser for the whole type is the only sensible possibility unless you are OK with a 3rd-party package implementing a parser supporting validation via JSON schema (I think I'd look at this first as juju is a quite established product).
A solution for this could be to use a type assertion by using a map to unmarshal the JSON data into:
type account struct {
Name string
Balance int
}
var str = `{
"name": "test#example.com",
"balance": "3"
}`
func main() {
var testing = map[string]interface{}{}
err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(str), &testing)
if err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
}
val, ok := testing["balance"]
if !ok {
fmt.Println("missing field balance")
return
}
nv, ok := val.(float64)
if !ok {
fmt.Println("balance should be a number")
return
}
fmt.Printf("%+v\n", nv)
}
See http://play.golang.org/p/iV7Qa1RrQZ
The type assertion here is done using float64 because it is the default number type supported by Go's JSON decoder.
It should be noted that this use of interface{} is probably not worth the trouble.
The UnmarshalTypeError (https://golang.org/pkg/encoding/json/#UnmarshalFieldError) contains an Offset field that could allow retrieving the contents of the JSON data that triggered the error.
You could for example return a message of the sort:
cannot unmarshal string into Go value of type int near `"balance": "3"`
It would seem that here provides an implementation to work around this issue in Go only.
type account struct {
Name string
Balance int `json:",string"`
}
In my estimation the more correct and sustainable approach is for you to create a client library in something like JavaScript and publish it into the NPM registry for others to use (private repository would work the same way). By providing this library you can tailor the API for the consumers in a meaningful way and prevent errors creeping into your main program.