I have this:
port := os.Getenv("huru_api_port") || ":8000"
that doesn't compile, Golang doesn't recognize that as syntax for defaulting to ":8000" if huru_api_port is empty/undefined.
Is there a good way to do this? On a side note, why is it ":8000" instead of "8000", for example:
log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8000", router))
There's no easy shorthand way to do that in Go, but for your case, you can use LookupEnv instead, which returns the value (if set) and a boolean indicating whether the key was found in the environment:
I would use LookupEnv. It offers a boolean that will be false if the variable is not set.
The :8000 means the listener will bind to all the network interfaces. You can think of it differing from 127.0.0.1:8000 which would only bind to the loopback interface.
os.LookupEnv will return the environment variable as a string and a boolean indicating whether or not the variable was set, so you'll either get
v, ok = "something", true
// or, if the env var isn't set
v, ok = "", false
// or, if the env var is set but empty:
v, ok = "", true
Use it like:
var port string
var ok bool
if port, ok = os.LookupEnv("huru_api_port"); !ok {
port = ":8000"
}