Validating Structs in Go

Verifying the validity of struct values is a crucial task in software development. When dealing with numerous small structs, individually checking each field can be cumbersome. Let's explore the idiomatic approach and an alternative solution for validating structs.

Idiomatic Validation

The example provided is a common approach for validating structs. Each field is checked individually using the struct's methods. However, this method becomes tedious as the number of fields or structs grows.

Alternative Solution

The Go community has developed various packages to simplify the validation process. One such package is the popular "go-validator" (https://github.com/go-validator/validator).

Using this package, you can define validation rules for each field using tags within the struct definition. The validator then automatically checks the values against the defined rules.

Example

Consider the following struct with validation rules:

import "github.com/go-validator/validator"

type Event struct {
    Id     int    `validator:"min=1"`
    UserId int    `validator:"min=1"`
    Start  string `validator:"datetime"`
    End    string `validator:"datetime"`