Working with JSON

The Go standard library includes encoding/json, which is for working with JSON data. Additionally, Go allows us to add support for JSON fields in Go structures using tags. Tags control the encoding and decoding of JSON records to and from Go structures. But first, we should talk about marshaling and unmarshaling JSON records.

Using Marshal() and Unmarshal()

Both the marshaling and unmarshaling of JSON data are important procedures for working with JSON data using Go structures. Marshaling is the process of converting a Go structure into a JSON record. We usually want that for transferring JSON data via computer networks or for saving it on disk. Unmarshaling is the process of converting a JSON record given as a byte slice into a Go structure. We usually want that when receiving JSON data via computer networks or when loading JSON data from disk files.

Note: The number one bug when converting JSON records into Go structures and vice versa is not making the required fields of our Go structures exported. When we have issues with marshaling and unmarshaling, begin our debugging process from there.

Coding example

The code in encodeDecode.go illustrates both the marshaling and unmarshaling of JSON records using hardcoded data for simplicity: