Go in Practice

Chapter 11. Reflection and code generation

This chapter covers

• Using values, kinds, and types from Go’s reflection system
• Parsing custom struct annotations
• Writing code generators for use with the go generate tool

In this chapter, we turn our attention to some of Go’s most interesting features. First, we present Go’s reflection system. Reflection, in software development, refers to a program’s ability to examine its own structure. Although Go’s reflection subsystem isn’t as versatile as Java’s, it’s still powerful. One feature that has enjoyed novel use is the annotation of structs. You’ll see in this chapter how to write custom tags for struct fields. As useful as Go’s reflection system is, though, sometimes it’s cleaner to avoid complex ...