Converting to and from JSON

In this section, we will look at getting and sending data from and to JSON. We will also look at creating a structure to handle data and how the JSON conversion is done.

When dealing with JSON in Golang via the standard library, we’ve got two primary options –json.Marshal/Unmarshal and json.NewEncoder(io.Writer)/NewDecoder(io.Reader). In this chapter, we will look at using the Encoder/Decoder methods. The reason for using these methods is that we can chain a function to the encoder/decoder that’s returned and call the .Encode and .Decode functions with ease. Another benefit of this approach is that it uses the streaming interface (namely io.Reader and io.Writer, used to represent an entity from/to which you can read or write a stream of bytes – the Reader and Writer interfaces are accepted as input and output by many utilities and functions in the standard library), so we have other choices than Marshal, which works with preallocated...