Given a struct like so:
type B struct {
X string
Y string
}
type D struct {
B
Z string
}
I want to reflect on D and get to the fields X, Y, Z.
Intuitively, before attempting the solution, I was assuming I would be able to traverse the struct D and get all fields using reflection (X, Y, Z) and won't have to deal with B.
But as you can see, I only see the embedded struct B using reflection and not its fields.
http://play.golang.org/p/qZQD5GdTA8
Is there a way I can make B fully transparent when reflecting on D?
Why do I want this?
Imaging a common struct (B in the example here), that is used in multiple other structs by using embedding. Using reflection, the attempt is to copy D into another similar struct in a different package. The destination struct for copying will have all attributes flatly laid out (no embedding there). So there is a mismatch from the source to the destination (embedding vs no embedding) but all the attributes flatly laid out are the same. I don't want to create custom solutions for each struct.
The 'transparency' you expected is just syntactic sugar and has nothing to do with the data representation. If you want to have a function that flattens your data structure, you would have to write it by yourself.
For example (On play):
func DeepFields(iface interface{}) []reflect.Value {
fields := make([]reflect.Value, 0)
ifv := reflect.ValueOf(iface)
ift := reflect.TypeOf(iface)
for i := 0; i < ift.NumField(); i++ {
v := ifv.Field(i)
switch v.Kind() {
case reflect.Struct:
fields = append(fields, DeepFields(v.Interface())...)
default:
fields = append(fields, v)
}
}
return fields
}