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The Go Workshop

You're reading from   The Go Workshop Learn to write clean, efficient code and build high-performance applications with Go

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Product type Paperback
Published in Dec 2019
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781838647940
Length 824 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Tools
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Authors (6):
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Sam Hennessy Sam Hennessy
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Sam Hennessy
Andrew Hayes Andrew Hayes
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Andrew Hayes
Gobin Sougrakpam Gobin Sougrakpam
Author Profile Icon Gobin Sougrakpam
Gobin Sougrakpam
Jeremy Leasor Jeremy Leasor
Author Profile Icon Jeremy Leasor
Jeremy Leasor
Delio D'Anna Delio D'Anna
Author Profile Icon Delio D'Anna
Delio D'Anna
Dániel Szabó Dániel Szabó
Author Profile Icon Dániel Szabó
Dániel Szabó
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Toc

Table of Contents (21) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Variables and Operators FREE CHAPTER 2. Logic and Loops 3. Core Types 4. Complex Types 5. Functions 6. Errors 7. Interfaces 8. Packages 9. Basic Debugging 10. About Time 11. Encoding and Decoding (JSON) 12. Files and Systems 13. SQL and Databases 14. Using the Go HTTP Client 15. HTTP Servers 16. Concurrent Work 17. Using Go Tools 18. Security 19. Special Features Appendix

Reflection

Reflection is the mechanism of inspecting code at runtime. Reflection is useful when you do not know or cannot guarantee the type of input for a function. In cases such as this, reflection can be used to inspect the type of the object and manipulate values of objects.

The Go reflect package gives you features to inspect and manipulate an object at runtime. It can be used not only for basic types such as int and string, but for inspecting slices, arrays, and structs as well.

Let's create a simple print() function to demonstrate how we can use reflection. We define a utility print function called MyPrint() that can print different types of objects. This is done by having an interface as an input to the function. Then, inside the function, we make use of the reflect package to alter the behavior according to the type of the input. Consider the following code:

package main
import (
  "fmt"
  "reflect"
)
type Animal struct...
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