Converting map to struct

I am trying to create a generic method in Go that will fill a struct using data from a map[string]interface{}. For example, the method signature and usage might look like:

func FillStruct(data map[string]interface{}, result interface{}) {
    ...
}

type MyStruct struct {
    Name string
    Age  int64
}

myData := make(map[string]interface{})
myData["Name"] = "Tony"
myData["Age"]  = 23

result := &MyStruct{}
FillStruct(myData, result)

// result now has Name set to "Tony" and Age set to 23

I know this can be done using JSON as an intermediary; is there another more efficient way of doing this?

Solution 1:

The simplest way would be to use https://github.com/mitchellh/mapstructure

import "github.com/mitchellh/mapstructure"

mapstructure.Decode(myData, &result)

If you want to do it yourself, you could do something like this:

http://play.golang.org/p/tN8mxT_V9h

func SetField(obj interface{}, name string, value interface{}) error {
    structValue := reflect.ValueOf(obj).Elem()
    structFieldValue := structValue.FieldByName(name)

    if !structFieldValue.IsValid() {
        return fmt.Errorf("No such field: %s in obj", name)
    }

    if !structFieldValue.CanSet() {
        return fmt.Errorf("Cannot set %s field value", name)
    }

    structFieldType := structFieldValue.Type()
    val := reflect.ValueOf(value)
    if structFieldType != val.Type() {
        return errors.New("Provided value type didn't match obj field type")
    }

    structFieldValue.Set(val)
    return nil
}

type MyStruct struct {
    Name string
    Age  int64
}

func (s *MyStruct) FillStruct(m map[string]interface{}) error {
    for k, v := range m {
        err := SetField(s, k, v)
        if err != nil {
            return err
        }
    }
    return nil
}

func main() {
    myData := make(map[string]interface{})
    myData["Name"] = "Tony"
    myData["Age"] = int64(23)

    result := &MyStruct{}
    err := result.FillStruct(myData)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println(err)
    }
    fmt.Println(result)
}

Solution 2:

Hashicorp's https://github.com/mitchellh/mapstructure library does this out of the box:

import "github.com/mitchellh/mapstructure"

mapstructure.Decode(myData, &result)

The second result parameter has to be an address of the struct.

Solution 3:

• the simplest way to do that is using encoding/json package

just for example:

package main
import (
    "fmt"
    "encoding/json"
)

type MyAddress struct {
    House string
    School string
}
type Student struct {
    Id int64
    Name string
    Scores float32
    Address MyAddress
    Labels []string
}

func Test() {

    dict := make(map[string]interface{})
    dict["id"] = 201902181425       // int
    dict["name"] = "jackytse"       // string
    dict["scores"] = 123.456        // float
    dict["address"] = map[string]string{"house":"my house", "school":"my school"}   // map
    dict["labels"] = []string{"aries", "warmhearted", "frank"}      // slice

    jsonbody, err := json.Marshal(dict)
    if err != nil {
        // do error check
        fmt.Println(err)
        return
    }

    student := Student{}
    if err := json.Unmarshal(jsonbody, &student); err != nil {
        // do error check
        fmt.Println(err)
        return
    }

    fmt.Printf("%#v\n", student)
}

func main() {
    Test()
}

Solution 4:

You can do it ... it may get a bit ugly and you'll be faced with some trial and error in terms of mapping types .. but heres the basic gist of it:

func FillStruct(data map[string]interface{}, result interface{}) {
    t := reflect.ValueOf(result).Elem()
    for k, v := range data {
        val := t.FieldByName(k)
        val.Set(reflect.ValueOf(v))
    }
}

Working sample: http://play.golang.org/p/PYHz63sbvL