I'm used to Java, and setting first steps in google go. I have a tree of objects with child objects etc... This tree is recursively dumped to an io.Writer. Output might be huge, so I don't want to create a string for each object, and concatenate the result in memory..
For debugging purposes, i want to fmt.Printf parts of this tree. Thus, I want to create a generic String() function on each object in which calls the ToStream function, returning the result as a string. In Java, this is easy: create the method on the base class. How do I do this in GO, without creating a custom String method for each kind of object.
See the code for what I want, specifically the line marked ERROR
package main
import (
"io"
"fmt"
"bytes"
)
//Base is an interface for bulk output
type Base interface {
ToStream(io.Writer)
}
//Impl1 has interface Base
type Impl1 struct{
stuff int
}
func (Impl1) ToStream(w io.Writer) {
fmt.Fprintf(w, "A lot of stuff")
}
//Impl2 has interface Base
type Impl2 struct{
otherstuff int
}
func (Impl2) ToStream(w io.Writer) {
fmt.Fprintf(w, "A lot of other stuff")
}
//I want to convert any base to a sting for debug output
//This should happen by the ToStream method
func (v Base) String() string {//ERROR here: Invalid receiver type Base (Base is an interface type)
//func (v Impl1) String() string {//This works, but requires re-implementation for every struct Impl1,Impl2,...
var buffer bytes.Buffer
v.ToStream(&buffer)
return string(buffer.Bytes())
}
func main(){
aBase:= new(Impl1)
fmt.Printf("%s
",aBase)
}
You can wrap around a Base to add the necessary String()
function. Here is one approach:
type StreamerToStringer struct {
Base
}
func (s StreamerToStringer) String() string {
var buffer bytes.Buffer
s.Base.ToStream(&buffer)
return string(buffer.Bytes())
}
With this, you can augment any Base
instance so it has a String()
method.
func main() {
aBase1 := StreamerToStringer{new(Impl1)}
aBase2 := StreamerToStringer{new(Impl2)}
fmt.Printf("%s
", aBase1)
fmt.Printf("%s
", aBase2)
// These wrapped values still support ToStream().
var buffer bytes.Buffer
aBase1.ToStream(&buffer)
fmt.Println(buffer.Bytes())
}
It is easier to first call:
fmt.Printf("%+v
", yourProject)
See if the information printed are enough for a start: the fmt
package mentions
when printing structs, the plus flag (%+v) adds field names
If that is not enough, then you would have to use reflection, as I mentioned in "Golang - How to print struct variables in console?".
Or you can have a look at the project davecgh/go-spew
(mentioned in "Go-spew: A Journey into Dumping Go Data Structures")
Go-spew
implements a deep pretty printer for Go data structures to aid in debugging
spew.Dump(myVar1, myVar2, ...)
spew.Fdump(someWriter, myVar1, myVar2, ...)
str := spew.Sdump(myVar1, myVar2, ...)
That would print something like:
(main.Foo) {
unexportedField: (*main.Bar)(0xf84002e210)({
flag: (main.Flag) flagTwo,
data: (uintptr) <nil>
}),
ExportedField: (map[interface {}]interface {}) {
(string) "one": (bool) true
}
}
([]uint8) {
00000000 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1a 1b 1c 1d 1e 1f 20 |............... |
00000010 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 2a 2b 2c 2d 2e 2f 30 |!"#$%&'()*+,-./0|
00000020 31 32 |12|
}
Seems like Java thinking blocked you here :-)
While Java has methods only Go does have functions. And of course you cannot have methods on an interface but you can make a plain function taking a Base
and doing stuff:
func Base2String(b Base) string {
var buffer bytes.Buffer
b.ToStream(&buffer)
return string(buffer.Bytes())
}
Now if you rename Base to something Go-ish (remember there is no type hierarchy in Go) you have some nice code.