Assume I have a password field in a User struct.
type User struct{
UserName string `json:"username"`
Password string `json:"-"`
}
My clients register their users by posting username and password together. So if I decode JSON to above struct, it ignores password. It's expected. But I wondered is there any way to ignore fields when only marshalling. I checked go official documentation page but couldn't find anything.
https://golang.org/pkg/encoding/json/
I can add an extra field into the struct but I need to know first is it possible to do that with JSON lib.
One common approach is to use a temporary type or variable, with same structure, but different json
tags or even different structure:
type User struct {
UserName string `json:"username"`
Password string `json:"password"`
}
func (usr User) MarshalJSON() ([]byte, error) {
var tmp struct {
UserName string `json:"username"`
}
tmp.UserName = usr.UserName
return json.Marshal(&tmp)
}
As with any custom marshaling/unmarshaling requirements in Go, your best bet is to look at implementing json.Marshaler
/json.Unmarshaler
interface on a custom type.
In this case, you can do it for the password field:
// Use an explicit password type.
type password string
type User struct{
UserName string `json:"username"`
Password password `json:"password"`
}
// Marshaler ignores the field value completely.
func (password) MarshalJSON() ([]byte, error) {
return []byte(`""`), nil
}
Note that by not implementing json.Unmarshaler
, type password
retains the default behavior of its underlying type (string
), which allows the struct to be unmarshalled with the Password
value.
Working example: https://play.golang.org/p/HZQoCKm0vN
I prefer type composition. For example:
type User struct {
UserName string `json:"username"`
}
type UserWithPassword struct {
*User
Password string `json:"password"`
}
use UserWithPassword when receiving data (eg. user creation / modification) and User when returning it (authentication).