Reflection in Golang

What is reflection?

In computer science, reflection is the ability of a computer program to examine and modify its own structure and behavior (specifically the values, meta-data, properties and functions) at runtime.

source: Wikipedia

Reflection can be used for observing and modifying program execution at runtime. A reflection-oriented program component can monitor the execution of an enclosure of code and can modify itself according to a desired goal related to that enclosure. This is typically accomplished by dynamically assigning program code at runtime.

In Golang reflection allows inspection of struct, interfaces, fields and methods at runtime without knowing the names of the interfaces, fields, methods at compile time. It also allows instantiation of new objects and invocation of methods.

Reflection in action

Reflection objects are used for obtaining type information at runtime. The structs that give access to the metadata of a running program are in the reflect package. The package contains structs that allow you to obtain information about the application and to dynamically emits types, values, and objects to the program.

Even that reflection is not idiomatic for Golang. We will explore in details some of reflect package capabilities.

Example: QueryBuilder

Lets assume that we are developing an object-relation mapping packages like gorm. We will implement QueryBuilder struct that is responsible for generating SQL queries for update, delete and insert.

The QueryBuilder has a field Type that keep a metadata information about the type that builder generates SQL queries for:

type QueryBuilder struct {
	Type reflect.Type
}

Typically the metadata for particular type could be accessed by instaciating the reflect.Type. Lets have the followin struct:

type Employee struct {
	ID        uint32
	FirstName string
	LastName  string
	Birthday  time.Time
}

We need to instaciate reflection.Type in order to access its type metadata. It is the representation of a Go type. We should use the following code snippet:

t := reflect.TypeOf(&Employee{}).Elem()
builder := &QueryBuilder{Type: t}

Note in case of pointer type, we should retrieve the underlying actual type by getting the result from the Elem function. It panics if the type’s Kind is not Array, Chan, Map, Ptr, or Slice.

Lets inspect the implementation of QueryBuilder function CreateSelectQuery:

func (qb *QueryBuilder) CreateSelectQuery() string {
	buffer := bytes.NewBufferString("")

	for index := 0; index < qb.Type.NumField(); index++ {
		field := qb.Type.Field(index)

		if index == 0 {
			buffer.WriteString("SELECT ")
		} else {
			buffer.WriteString(", ")
		}
		column := field.Name
		buffer.WriteString(column)
	}

	if buffer.Len() > 0 {
		fmt.Fprintf(buffer, " FROM %s", qb.Type.Name())
	}

	return buffer.String()
}

The type NumField function returns the struct type’s field count. The for-loop interates over that count and obtain every field by index. The type’s Field function returns a StructField value that describes the field owned by the underlying struct:

// A StructField describes a single field in a struct.
type StructField struct {
	// Name is the field name.
	// PkgPath is the package path that qualifies a lower case (unexported)
	// field name.  It is empty for upper case (exported) field names.
	// See https://golang.org/ref/spec#Uniqueness_of_identifiers
	Name    string
	PkgPath string

	Type      Type      // field type
	Tag       StructTag // field tag string
	Offset    uintptr   // offset within struct, in bytes
	Index     []int     // index sequence for Type.FieldByIndex
	Anonymous bool      // is an embedded field
}

Then we are appending the field name to the select query. The final implementation produces the following result for Employee struct:

SELECT ID, FirstName, LastName, Birthday FROM Employee

But how to handle the case when our field are represented with different names in underlying database. Lets say that we want to represent ID field as id_pk, FirstName field as first_name and LastName field as last_name.

We can implement that kind of mapping by using field tags.

The use of tags strongly depends on how your struct is used. A typical use is to add specifications or constraints for persistence or serialisation. For example, when using the JSON parser/encoder, tags are used to specify how the struct will be read from JSON or written in JSON, when the default encoding scheme (i.e. the name of the field) isn’t to be used.

Lets change the Employee struct declaration to use tags that carries additional information about how the field should be mapped into the underlying database:

type Employee struct {
	ID        uint32 `orm:"id_pk"`
	FirstName string `orm:"first_name"`
	LastName  string `orm:"last_name"`
	Birthday  time.Time
}

Then we can access the associated tags by using field.Tag field. It provides a Get function that allows access to any of the tags by name:

column := field.Name
if tag := field.Tag.Get("orm"); tag != "" {
	column = tag
}

buffer.WriteString(column)

Then the generated select query would be:

SELECT id_pk, first_name, last_name, Birthday FROM Employee

Example: Validating fields

In the following example, we will explore how to read and validate fields values. Lets assume that we have the following PaymentTransaction struct:

type PaymentTransaction struct {
	Amount      float64 `validate:"positive"`
	Description string  `validate:"max_length:250"`
}

Like the previous example, we will use the tag annotation. The implementation of Validate function is the following code snippet:

func Validate(obj interface{}) error {
	v := reflect.ValueOf(obj).Elem()
	t := v.Type()

	for index := 0; index < v.NumField(); index++ {
		vField := v.Field(index)
		tField := t.Field(index)

		tag := tField.Tag.Get("validate")
		if tag == "" {
			continue
		}

		switch vField.Kind() {
		case reflect.Float64:
			value := vField.Float()
			if tag == "positive" && value < 0 {
				value = math.Abs(value)
				vField.SetFloat(value)
			}
		case reflect.String:
			value := vField.String()
			if tag == "upper_case" {
				value = strings.ToUpper(value)
				vField.SetString(value)
			}
		default:
			return fmt.Errorf("Unsupported kind '%s'", vField.Kind())
		}
	}

	return nil
}

The reflect.Value is the reflection interface to a Go value. It is used to access all member for particular object (fields, function and interfaces). By invoking the Kind function we determine the field type. Then we could access the actual value with the appropriate type function (such as Float or String). To change the field value we should use some of the setters functions.

Example: Recognising interfaces and calling functions

The reflect package can used to identify whether a particular interface is implemented.

Lets have the Validator interface which provide a Validate function called every time when an object is validated:

type Validator interface {
	Validate() error
}

We will extend the implementation of PaymentTransaction struct by implementing the Validator interface:

func (p *PaymentTransaction) Validate() error {
	fmt.Println("Validating payment transaction")
	return nil
}

In order to determine whether the PaymentTransaction implements the interface, we should call the reflect.Type function Implements. It returns true if the type obeys the interface signature.

To call a particular function, we could either case the object to the Validator interface or retrieve the method via MethodByName function:

func CustomValidate(obj interface{

What is reflection?#

Reflection in action#

Example: QueryBuilder#

Example: Validating fields#

Example: Recognising interfaces and calling functions#

What is reflection?

Reflection in action

Example: QueryBuilder

Example: Validating fields

Example: Recognising interfaces and calling functions