GO Web Services

Handling Requests

These are the two main ways to handle requests

• Handle a handler to handle requests matching a pattern
• HandleFunc a function to handle requests matching a pattern

Handle

Here is the signature for Handle.

func Handle(pattern string, handler Handler)

Handler is an interface which has the signature

type Handler interface {
	ServeHTTP(ResponseWriter, *Request)
}

So here is how to use this approach. We create a type and implement the interface required.

// Creating a handler type
type fooHandler struct {
  Message string
}

// Implementing the function for the interface
func (f *fooHandler) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWrite, r *http.Request) {
  w.Write( []byte(f.Message) )
}


func main() {
  http.Handle("/foo", &fooHandler{Message: "hello Word"})
}

Remember Remember we can construct a struct using a struct literal e.g.

type Student struct {
    Name string
    Age  int
}

pb := &Student{ // pb == &Student{"Bob", 8}
    Name: "Bob",
    Age:  8,
}

Requests

These consist of three parts

• Method
• Headers
• Body

HandleFunc

Perhaps somewhat simpler. We just need to create a function with the correct signature

func main() {
  foo := funct(w http.ResponseWritter, _ *http.Response) {
    w.Write( []byte("hello world") )
  }

  http.HandleFunc("/foo", foo)
}

Handling JSON

Marshal and Unmarshal

Every GO type implements the empty interface so any struct can be marshaled into JSON.

func Marshal(v interface{}) (byte[]. error)

To ensure the struct is marshaled, all the fields need to be exported. In this example surname would not be marchaled.

type foo struct{
  Message string
  Age int
  surname string
}

json,Marshal(&foo{"4Score",56, "Lincoln"})

To Unmarshal

f := foo{}
json.Unmarshal([]byte(`{"Message":"4Score","Age":56, "Name":"Abe"}`), &f)

Demo Data

Demo Type

Lets make a type to encode

package product

// Product
type Product struct {
	ProductID      int    `json:"productId"`
	Manufacturer   string `json:"manufacturer"`
	Sku            string `json:"sku"`
	Upc            string `json:"upc"`
	PricePerUnit   string `json:"pricePerUnit"`
	QuantityOnHand int    `json:"quantityOnHand"`
	ProductName    string `json:"productName"`
}

Make Some Demo Data

Here is some demo data.

[
  {
    "productId": 1,
    "manufacturer": "Johns-Jenkins",
    "sku": "p5z343vdS",
    "upc": "939581000000",
    "pricePerUnit": "497.45",
    "quantityOnHand": 9703,
    "productName": "sticky note"
  },
  {
    "productId": 2,
    "manufacturer": "Hessel, Schimmel and Feeney",
    "sku": "i7v300kmx",
    "upc": "740979000000",
    "pricePerUnit": "282.29",
    "quantityOnHand": 9217,
    "productName": "leg warmers"
  },
...

Implementing Method Types

Create Handler and Determine Mathod

We can now provide a GET method within the handler. The handler determines which method by looking at the request.

func handleProduct(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
...
	switch r.Method {
            // GET
            // POST
            // etc
        }
}

GET Method

We use the Mnmarshal method to encode the json

	case http.MethodGet:
		productsJSON, err := json.Marshal(productList)
		if err != nil {
			w.WriteHeader(http.StatusInternalServerError)
			return
		}
		w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
		w.Write(productsJSON)

POST Method

We use the Unmarshal method to decode the json

	case http.MethodPost:
		// add a new product to the list
		var newProduct Product
		bodyBytes, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r.Body)
		if err != nil {
			w.WriteHeader(http.StatusBadRequest)
			return
		}
		err = json.Unmarshal(bodyBytes, &newProduct)
		if err != nil {
			w.WriteHeader(http.StatusBadRequest)
			return
		}
		if newProduct.ProductID != 0 {
			w.WriteHeader(http.StatusBadRequest)
			return
		}
		newProduct.ProductID = getNextID()
		productList = append(productList, newProduct)
		w.WriteHeader(http.StatusCreated)

Managing the Routes

Example Routes

With REST we generally have one route for all products and one for a particular product. e.g. GET /products/123. To manage this we greate different handlers.

	http.Handle("/products", middlewareHandler(productListHandler))
	http.Handle("/products/", middlewareHandler(productItemHandler))

Managing the URL

Here is an example of getting the 123 from the URL. Note we return a 404 if we cannot determine the resource and not a bad request.

func productHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	urlPathSegments := strings.Split(r.URL.Path, "products/")
	productID, err := strconv.Atoi(urlPathSegments[len(urlPathSegments)-1])
	if err != nil {
		log.Print(err)
		w.WriteHeader(http.StatusNotFound)
		return
	}
	product, listItemIndex := findProductByID(productID)
	if product == nil {
		http.Error(w, fmt.Sprintf("no product with id %d", productID), http.StatusNotFound)
		return
	}
	switch r.Method {
	case http.MethodGet:
...

Middeware

Explanation

I liked this example provided in GO. Just made sense to me. This is like the interceptors in Angular.

func enableCorsMiddleware(handler http.Handler) http.Handler {

  return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {

  // do stuff before intended handler here 

  handler.ServeHttpp(w,r)

  // do stuff after intended handler here 

})

func intendedFunction(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
  // business logic here
}

func main() {
  intendedHandler := http.HandlerFunc(intendedFunction)
  http.Handle("/foo", enableCorsMiddleware(intendedHandler))
  http.ListenAndServe(":5000", nil)
}

Wrapping Handlers

When using middleware we need to convert our handler to http.handlers. To do this we use the http.handlerFunc. E.g.

// Before Middleware

//	http.HandleFunc("/products", productsHandler)
//	http.HandleFunc("/products/", productHandler)
//	http.ListenAndServe(":5000", nil)

func main() {
	productListHandler := http.HandlerFunc(productsHandler)
	productItemHandler := http.HandlerFunc(productHandler)

	http.Handle("/products", middlewareHandler(productListHandler))
	http.Handle("/products/", middlewareHandler(productItemHandler))
	http.ListenAndServe(":5000", nil)
}