How To Use JSON in Go

The author selected the Diversity in Tech Fund to receive a donation as part of the Write for DOnations program.

Introduction

In modern programs, it’s important to communicate between one program and another. Whether it’s a Go program checking if a user has access to another program, a JavaScript program getting a list of past orders to display on a website, or a Rust program reading test results from a file, programs need a way to provide other programs with data. However, many programming languages have their own way of storing data internally that other languages don’t understand. To allow these languages to interact, the data needs to be converted to a common format they can all understand. One of these formats, JSON, is a popular way to transmit data over the internet as well as between programs in the same system.

Many modern programming languages include a way to convert data to and from JSON in their standard libraries, and Go does as well. By using the encoding/json package provided by Go, your Go programs will also be able to interact with any other system that can communicate using JSON.

In this tutorial, you will start by creating a program that uses the encoding/json package to encode data from a map into JSON data, then update your program to use a struct type to encode the data instead. After that, you will update your program to decode JSON data into a map before finally decoding the JSON data into a struct type.

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, you will need:

• Go version 1.16 or greater installed. To set this up, follow the How To Install Go tutorial for your operating system.
• Familiarity with JSON, which you can find in An Introduction to JSON.
• The ability to use Go struct tags to customize fields on struct types. More information can be found in How To Use Struct Tags in Go.
• Optionally, be aware of how to create date and time values in Go. You can read more in How To Use Dates and Times in Go.

Using a Map to Generate JSON

Go’s support for encoding and decoding JSON is provided by the standard library’s encoding/json package. The first function you’ll use from that package is the json.Marshal function. Marshalling, sometimes also known as serialization, is the process of transforming program data in memory into a format that can be transmitted or saved elsewhere. The json.Marshal function, then, is used to convert Go data into JSON data. The json.Marshal function accepts an interface{} type as the value to marshal to JSON, so any value is allowed to be passed in as a parameter and will return the JSON data as a result. In this section, you will create a program using the json.Marshal function to generate JSON containing various types of data from Go map values, and then print those values to the output.

Most JSON is represented as an object, with a string key and various other types as values. Because of this, the most flexible way to generate JSON data in Go is by putting data into a map using string keys and interface{} values. The string key can be directly translated to a JSON object key, and the interface{} value allows the value to be any other value, whether it’s a string, an int, or even another map[string]interface{}.

To get started using the encoding/json package in a program, you’ll need to have a directory for the program. In this tutorial, you’ll use a directory named projects.

First, make the projects directory and navigate to it:

mkdir projects
cd projects

Next, make the directory for your project. In this case, use the directory jsondata:

mkdir jsondata
cd jsondata

Inside the jsondata directory use nano, or your favorite editor, to open the main.go file:

nano main.go

In the main.go file, you’ll add a main function to run your program. Next, you’ll add a map[string]interface{} value with various keys and types of data. Then, you’ll use the json.Marshal function to marshal the map data into JSON data.

Add the following lines to main.go:

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
)

func main() {
	data := map[string]interface{}{
		"intValue":    1234,
		"boolValue":   true,
		"stringValue": "hello!",
		"objectValue": map[string]interface{}{
			"arrayValue": []int{1, 2, 3, 4},
		},
	}

	jsonData, err := json.Marshal(data)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Printf("could not marshal json: %s\n", err)
		return
	}

	fmt.Printf("json data: %s\n", jsonData)
}

You’ll see in the data variable that each value has a string as the key, but the values for those keys vary. One is an int value, another is a bool value, and one is even another map[string]interface{} value with a []int value inside it.

When you pass the data variable to json.Marshal, the function will look through all the values you’ve provided and determine which type they are and how to represent them in JSON. If there are any problems in the translation, the json.Marshal function will return an error describing the issue. If the translation is successful, though, the jsonData variable will contain a []byte of the marshalled JSON data. Since a []byte value can be converted to a string value using myString := string(jsonData), or the %s verb in a format string, you can then print the JSON data to the screen using fmt.Printf.

Save and close the file.

To see the output of your program, use the go run command and provide the main.go file:

go run main.go

Your output will look similar to this:

Output
json data: {"boolValue":true,"intValue":1234,"objectValue":{"arrayValue":[1,2,3,4]},"stringValue":"hello!"}

In the output, you’ll see that the top-level JSON value is an object represented by curly braces ({}) surrounding it. All of the values you included in data are present. You’ll also see the objectValue’s map[string]interface{} was translated into another JSON object surrounded by {}, and also includes arrayValue inside it with the array value of [1,2,3,4].

Encoding Times in JSON

The encoding/json package doesn’t just support types like string and int values, though. It can also encode more complex types. One of the more complex types it supports is the time.Time type from the time package.

To see this in action, open your main.go file again and add a time.Time value to your data using the time.Date function:

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"time"
)

func main() {
	data := map[string]interface{}{
		"intValue":    1234,
		"boolValue":   true,
		"stringValue": "hello!",
		"dateValue":   time.Date(2022, 3, 2, 9, 10, 0, 0, time.UTC),
		"objectValue": map[string]interface{}{
			"arrayValue": []int{1, 2, 3, 4},
		},
	}

	...
}

This update will assign the date March 2, 2022, and the time 9:10:00 AM in the UTC time zone to the dateValue key.

Once you’ve saved your changes, run your program again with the same go run command as before:

go run main.go

Your output will look similar to this:

Output
json data: {"boolValue":true,"dateValue":"2022-03-02T09:10:00Z","intValue":1234,"objectValue":{"arrayValue":[1,2,3,4]},"stringValue":"hello!"}

This time in the output, you’ll see a dateValue field in the JSON data with the time formatted using the RFC 3339 format, a common format used to convey dates and times as string values.

Encoding null Values in JSON

Depending on the systems your program interacts with, you may be required to send null values in your JSON data, and Go’s encoding/json package can handle that for you as well. Using a map, it’s only a matter of adding new string keys with a nil value.

To add a couple of null values to your JSON output, open your main.go file again and add the following lines:

...

func main() {
	data := map[string]interface{}{
		"intValue":    1234,
		"boolValue":   true,
		"stringValue": "hello!",
                "dateValue":   time.Date(2022, 3, 2, 9, 10, 0, 0, time.UTC),
		"objectValue": map[string]interface{}{
			"arrayValue": []int{1, 2, 3, 4},
		},
		"nullStringValue": nil,
		"nullIntValue":    nil,
	}

	...
}

The values you added to the data have keys that say it’s a string value or an int value, but there’s actually nothing in the code that is making it either of those values. Since the map has interface{} values, all the code knows is that the interface{} value is nil. Since you’re only using this map to convert from Go data to JSON data, the distinction at this point doesn’t make a difference.

Once you’ve saved your changes to main.go, run your program using go run:

go run main.go

Your output will look similar to this:

Output
json data: {"boolValue":true,"dateValue":"2022-03-02T09:10:00Z","intValue":1234,"nullIntValue":null,"nullStringValue":null,"objectValue":{"arrayValue":[1,2,3,4]},"stringValue":"hello!"}

Now in the output, you’ll see the nullIntValue and nullStringValue fields are included with a JSON null value. This way you can still use a map[string]interface{} value to translate Go data into JSON data with the expected fields.

In this section, you created a program that can marshal a map[string]interface{} value into JSON data. Then, you added a time.Time field to the data and also included a pair of null-value fields.

While using a map[string]interface{} to marshal JSON data can be very flexible, it can also become a hassle if you need to send the same data in multiple places. If you copy this data to more than one place in your code, it can be easy to accidentally mistype a field name, or assign the incorrect data to a field. For times like these, it can be beneficial to use a struct type to represent the data you’re converting to JSON.

Using a Struct to Generate JSON

One of the benefits of using a statically typed language like Go is that you can use those types to let the compiler check for or enforce consistency in your programs. Go’s encoding/json package allows you to take advantage of this by defining a struct type to represent the JSON data. You can control how the data contained in the struct is translated using struct tags. In this section, you will update your program to use a struct type instead of a map type to generate your JSON data.

When you use a struct to define JSON data, the field names (not the struct type name itself) you expect to be translated must be exported, meaning they must start with a capital letter, such as IntValue, or the encoding/json package will not be able to access the fields to translate them to JSON. If you don’t use struct tags to control the naming of those fields, the field names will be translated directly as they are on the struct. Using the default names may be what you’d like in your JSON data, depending on how you’d like your data to be formed. If this is the case, you wouldn’t need to add any struct tags. However, many JSON consumers use name formats such as intValue or int_value for their field names, so adding these struct tags will allow you to control how that translation happens.

For example, say you had a struct with a field called IntValue that you marshalled to JSON:

type myInt struct {
	IntValue int
}

data := &myInt{IntValue: 1234}

If you marshalled the data variable to JSON using the json.Marshal function, you would end up with the following value:

{"IntValue":1234}

However, if your JSON consumer expects the field to be named intValue instead of IntValue, you’ll need a way to to tell encoding/json. Since json.Marshal doesn’t know what you expect the field to be named in the JSON data, you’ll tell it by adding a struct tag to the field. By adding a json struct tag to the IntValue field with a value of intValue, you tell json.Marshal it should use the name intValue when generating the JSON data:

type myInt struct {
	IntValue int `json:"intValue"`
}

data := &myInt{IntValue: 1234}

This time if you marshal the data variable to JSON, the json.Marshal function will see the json struct tag and know to name the field intValue, so you’ll get your expected result:

{"intValue":1234}

Now, you’ll update your program to use a struct value for your JSON data. You’ll add a myJSON struct type to define your top-level JSON object, as well as a myObject struct to define your inner JSON object for the ObjectValue field. You’ll also add a json struct tag to each of the fields to tell json.Marshal how to name them in the JSON data. You’ll also need to update the data variable assignment to use your myJSON struct, declaring it similar to how you would any other Go struct.

Open your main.go file and make the following changes:

...

type myJSON struct {
	IntValue        int       `json:"intValue"`
	BoolValue       bool      `json:"boolValue"`
	StringValue     string    `json:"stringValue"`
	DateValue       time.Time `json:"dateValue"`
	ObjectValue     *myObject `json:"objectValue"`
	NullStringValue *string   `json:"nullStringValue"`
	NullIntValue    *int      `json:"nullIntValue"`
}

type myObject struct {
	ArrayValue []int `json:"arrayValue"`
}

func main() {
	otherInt := 4321
	data := &myJSON{
		IntValue:    1234,
		BoolValue:   true,
		StringValue: "hello!",
		DateValue:   time.Date(2022, 3, 2, 9, 10, 0, 0, time.UTC),
		ObjectValue: &myObject{
			ArrayValue: []int{1, 2, 3, 4},
		},
		NullStringValue: nil,
		NullIntValue:    &otherInt,
	}

	...
}

Many of these changes are similar to the IntValue field name example from before, but some of the changes deserve to be called out specifically. One of them, the ObjectValue field, is using a reference type of *myObject to tell the JSON marshaller to expect either a reference to a myObject value or a nil value. This is how you can define a JSON object that is multiple layers of custom objects deep. If your JSON data required it, you could also have another struct type referenced inside the myObject type, and so on. Using this pattern, you can describe very complex JSON objects using Go struct types.

Another pair of fields to look at in the above code are NullStringValue and NullIntValue. Unlike StringValue and IntValue, the types of these values are reference types *string and *int. By default, string and int types cannot have a value of nil since their “empty” values are "" and 0. So if you want to represent a field that can be either one type or nil, you need to make it a reference. For example, imagine you have a user questionnaire and you want to be able to represent if a user chose not to answer the question (a null value), or the user didn’t have an answer to the question (a "" value).

This code also updates the NullIntValue field to assign a value of 4321 to it to show how you might assign a value to a reference type such as *int. In Go you can only create references to primitive types, such as int and string, using variables. So, in order to assign a value to the NullIntValue field, you first assign the value to another variable, otherInt, and then get a reference to that using &otherInt (instead of doing &4321 directly).

Once you have your updates saved, run your program using go run:

go run main.go

Your output will look similar to this:

Output
json data: {"intValue":1234,"boolValue":true,"stringValue":"hello!","dateValue":"2022-03-02T09:10:00Z","objectValue":{"arrayValue":[1,2,3,4]},"nullStringValue":null,"nullIntValue":4321}

You’ll see this output is the same as when you used a map[string]interface{} value, except this time nullIntValue has a value of 4321 because that’s the value of otherInt.

Initially, it may take some extra time to set up your struct values, but once you have them defined, you can use them over and over in your code, and the result will be the same no matter where you use them. You can also update them in one place instead of trying to find every place where a map may be used instead.

Go’s JSON marshaller also allows you to control whether a field should be included in the JSON output based on whether the value is empty or not. Sometimes you may have a large JSON object or optional fields you don’t want to be included all the time, so omitting those fields can be useful. Controlling whether a field is omitted when it’s empty or not is done via the omitempty option in the json struct tag.

Now, update your program to make the NullStringValue field omitempty and add a new field called EmptyString with the same option:

...

type myJSON struct {
	...
	
	NullStringValue *string   `json:"nullStringValue,omitempty"`
	NullIntValue    *int      `json:"nullIntValue"`
	EmptyString     string    `json:"emptyString,omitempty"`
}

...

Now, when myJSON is marshalled, both the EmptyString and NullStringValue fields will be excluded from the output if their values are empty.

After you’ve saved your changes, run your program using go run:

go run main.go

Your output will look similar to this:

Output
json data: {"intValue":1234,"boolValue":true,"stringValue":"hello!","dateValue":"2022-03-02T09:10:00Z","objectValue":{"arrayValue":[1,2,3,4]},"nullIntValue":4321}

This time in the output, you’ll see the nullStringValue field no longer appears. Since it’s considered empty by having a nil value, the omitempty option excluded it from the output. You’ll also see the new emptyString field isn’t included either. Even though the emptyString value isn’t nil, the default "" value for a string is considered empty so it was excluded as well.

In this section, you updated your program to use struct types to generate JSON data with json.Marshal instead of a map type. You also updated your program to omit empty fields from your JSON output.

In order for your programs to fit well into the JSON ecosystem, though, you need to do more than just generate JSON data. You’ll also need to be able to read JSON data being sent in response to your requests, or other systems sending requests to you. The encoding/json package also provides a way to decode JSON data into various Go types. In the next section, you’ll update your program to decode a JSON string into a Go map type.

Parsing JSON Using a Map

Similar to the first section of this tutorial, where you used a map[string]interface{} as a flexible way to generate JSON data, you can also use it as a flexible way to read JSON data. The json.Unmarshal function, essentially the opposite of the json.Marshal function, will take JSON data and translate it back into Go data. You provide json.Unmarshal with the JSON data as well as the Go variable to put the unmarshalled data into and it will either return an error value if it’s unable to do it, or a nil error value if it succeeded. In this section, you will update your program to use the json.Unmarshal function to read JSON data from a pre-defined string value into a map variable. You will also update your program to print the Go data to the output.

Now, update your program to use json.Unmarshal to unmarshal JSON data to a map[string]interface{}. You’ll start by replacing your original data variable with a jsonData variable containing a JSON string. Then you’ll declare a new data variable as a map[string]interface{} to receive the JSON data. And finally, you’ll use json.Unmarshal with those variables to access the JSON data.

Open your main.go file and replace the lines in your main function with the following:

...

func main() {
	jsonData := `
		{
			"intValue":1234,
			"boolValue":true,
			"stringValue":"hello!",
			"dateValue":"2022-03-02T09:10:00Z",
			"objectValue":{
				"arrayValue":[1,2,3,4]
			},
			"nullStringValue":null,
			"nullIntValue":null
		}
	`

	var data map[string]interface{}
	err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(jsonData), &data)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Printf("could not unmarshal json: %s\n", err)
		return
	}

	fmt.Printf("json map: %v\n", data)
}

In this update, the jsonData variable is being set using a raw string literal to allow the declaration to span multiple lines for easier reading. After declaring data as a map[string]interface{}, you pass jsonData and data to json.Unmarshal to unmarshal the JSON data into the data variable.

The jsonData variable is being passed to json.Unmarshal as a []byte because the function requires a []byte type and jsonData is initially defined as a string type. This works because a string in Go can be translated to a []byte, and vice versa. The data variable is being passed as a reference because in order for json.Unmarshal to put data into the variable it needs to have a reference to where the variable is being stored in memory.

Finally, once the JSON data has been unmarshalled into the data variable, you print it to the screen using fmt.Printf.

To run your updated program, save your changes and run the program using go run:

go run main.go

The output will look similar to this:

Output
json map: map[boolValue:true dateValue:2022-03-02T09:10:00Z intValue:1234 nullIntValue:<nil> nullStringValue:<nil> objectValue:map[arrayValue:[1 2 3 4]] stringValue:hello!]

This time, your output shows the Go side of the JSON translation. You have a map value, with the various fields from the JSON data included. You’ll see that even the null fields from the JSON data show up in the map.

Now, because your Go data is in a map[string]interface{}, there’s a little bit of work that needs to go into using the data. You need to get the value from the map using the desired string key value, then you need to make sure the value you received is the one you were expecting because it’s returned to you as an interface{} value.

To do this, open the main.go file and update your program to read the dateValue field with the following code:

...

func main() {
	...
	
	fmt.Printf("json map: %v\n", data)

	rawDateValue, ok := data["dateValue"]
	if !ok {
		fmt.Printf("dateValue does not exist\n")
		return
	}
	dateValue, ok := rawDateValue.(string)
	if !ok {
		fmt.Printf("dateValue is not a string\n")
		return
	}
	fmt.Printf("date value: %s\n", dateValue)
}

In this update, you use data["dateValue"] to get the rawDateValue as an interface{} type, and use the ok variable to make sure the dateValue field is in the map.

Then, you use a type assertion to assert the type of rawDateValue is actually a string value, and assign it to the variable dateValue. After that, you use the ok variable again to make sure the assertion succeeded.

Finally, you use fmt.Printf to print dateValue.

To run your updated progam again, save your changes and run it using go run:

go run main.go

Your output will look similar to this:

Output
json map: map[boolValue:true dateValue:2022-03-02T09:10:00Z intValue:1234 nullIntValue:<nil> nullStringValue:<nil> objectValue:map[arrayValue:[1 2 3 4]] stringValue:hello!]
date value: 2022-03-02T09:10:00Z

You can see the date value line showing the dateValue field extracted from the map and converted to a string value.

In this section, you updated your program to use the json.Unmarshal function with a map[string]interface{} variable to unmarshal JSON data into Go data. Then, you updated the program to extract the value of dateValue from the Go data and print it to the screen.

However, this update does show one of the downsides of using a map[string]interface{} to unmarshal JSON in Go. Since Go doesn’t know which type of data each field is (the only thing it knows is it’s an interface{}), the best it can do to unmarshal the data is make a best guess. This means complex values like time.Time for the dateValue field can’t be unmarshaled for you and can only be accessed as a string. A similar problem happens if you try to access any number value in a map this way. Since json.Unmarshal doesn’t know whether the number should be an int, a float, an int64, and so on, the best guess it can make is to put it into the most flexible number type available, a float64.

While using a map to decode JSON data can be flexible, it also leaves more work for you when interpreting the data you have. Similar to how the json.Marshal function can use struct values to generate JSON data, the json.Unmarshal function can use struct values to read JSON data. This can help remove the type assertion complexities of using a map by using the type definitions on the struct’s fields to determine which types the JSON data should be interpreted as. In the next section, you will update your program to use struct types to remove these complexities.

Parsing JSON Using a Struct

When you’re reading JSON data, there’s a good chance you already know the structure of the data you’re receiving; otherwise, it would be difficult to interpret. You can use this knowledge of the structure to give Go some hints about what your data looks like and the type of data you’re expecting.

In a previous section, you defined the myJSON and myObject struct values and added json struct tags to let Go know how to name the fields when generating JSON. Now you can use those same struct values to decode the JSON string you’ve been using, which can be beneficial for reducing duplicated code in your program if you’re marshalling and unmarshalling the same JSON data. Another benefit of using a struct for unmarshalling JSON data is that you can tell Go the type of data expected for each field. Finally, you also benefit from using Go’s compiler to check that you’re using the correct names on fields instead of potentially missing a typo in the string values you’d be using with a map value.

Now, open your main.go file and update the data variable declaration to use a reference to the myJSON struct, and add a few fmt.Printf lines to show the data of various fields on myJSON:

...

func main() {
	...
	
	var data *myJSON
	err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(jsonData), &data)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Printf("could not unmarshal json: %s\n", err)
		return
	}

	fmt.Printf("json struct: %#v\n", data)
	fmt.Printf("dateValue: %#v\n", data.DateValue)
	fmt.Printf("objectValue: %#v\n", data.ObjectValue)
}

Since you previously defined the struct types, you’ll only need to update the type of the data field to support unmarshalling to a struct. The rest of the updates show some of the data in the struct itself.

Now, save your updates and run your program using go run:

go run main.go

Your output will look similar to this:

Output
json struct: &main.myJSON{IntValue:1234, BoolValue:true, StringValue:"hello!", DateValue:time.Date(2022, time.March, 2, 9, 10, 0, 0, time.UTC), ObjectValue:(*main.myObject)(0x1400011c180), NullStringValue:(*string)(nil), NullIntValue:(*int)(nil), EmptyString:""}
dateValue: time.Date(2022, time.March, 2, 9, 10, 0, 0, time.UTC)
objectValue: &main.myObject{ArrayValue:[]int{1, 2, 3, 4}}

There are a couple of things to notice in the output this time. You’ll see in both the json struct line as well as the dateValue line that the date value in your JSON data has now been converted to a time.Time value (the time.Date format is what’s shown when %#v is used as the format verb). Since Go was able to see the time.Time type on myJSON’s DateValue field, it was also able to parse the string value for you as well.

The other thing to notice is that EmptyString shows up on the json struct line even though it wasn’t included in the original JSON data. If a field is included on a struct used for JSON unmarshalling and isn’t included in the JSON data being unmarshalled, that field is just set to the default value of its type and ignored. This way you can safely define all the possible fields your JSON data may have without worrying about getting an error if a field doesn’t exist on either side of the process. Both NullStringValue and NullIntValue are also set to their default value of nil because the JSON data said their values were null, but they would also be set to nil if those fields had been excluded from the JSON data.

Similar to how the EmptyString field on your struct was ignored by json.Unmarshal when the emptyString field was missing from the JSON data, the opposite is also true. If a field is included in the JSON data but doesn’t have a corresponding field on the Go struct, that JSON field is ignored and parsing continues on with the next JSON field. This way, if the JSON data you’re reading is very large and your program only cares about a small number of those fields, you can choose to create a struct that only includes the fields you care about. Any fields included in the JSON data that aren’t defined on the struct are simply ignored and Go’s JSON parser will continue on with the next field.

To see this in action, open up your main.go file one last time and update the jsonData to include a field that’s not included on myJSON:

...

func main() {
	jsonData := `
		{
			"intValue":1234,
			"boolValue":true,
			"stringValue":"hello!",
			"dateValue":"2022-03-02T09:10:00Z",
			"objectValue":{
				"arrayValue":[1,2,3,4]
			},
			"nullStringValue":null,
			"nullIntValue":null,
			"extraValue":4321
		}
	`

	...
}

Once you’ve added the JSON data, save your file and run it using go run:

go run main.go

Your output will look similar to this:

Output
json struct: &main.myJSON{IntValue:1234, BoolValue:true, StringValue:"hello!", DateValue:time.Date(2022, time.March, 2, 9, 10, 0, 0, time.UTC), ObjectValue:(*main.myObject)(0x14000126180), NullStringValue:(*string)(nil), NullIntValue:(*int)(nil), EmptyString:""}
dateValue: time.Date(2022, time.March, 2, 9, 10, 0, 0, time.UTC)
objectValue: &main.myObject{ArrayValue:[]int{1, 2, 3, 4}}

You shouldn’t see any difference between this output and the previous output because Go will have ignored the extraValue field in the JSON data and continued on.

In this section, you updated your program to use the struct types you previously defined to unmarshal your JSON data. You saw how Go was able to parse a time.Time value for you and ignore the EmptyString field defined on the struct type but not in the JSON data. You also added an additional field to the JSON data to see that Go will safely continue parsing the data even if you only define a subset of the fields in the JSON data.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you created a new program to use the encoding/json package in Go’s standard library. First, you used the json.Marshal function with a map[string]interface{} type to create JSON data in a flexible way. Then, you updated your program to use struct types with json struct tags to generate JSON data in a consistent and reliable way with json.Marshal. After that, you used the json.Unmarshal function with a map[string]interface{} type to decode a JSON string into Go data. Finally, you used the struct types you’d previously defined with the json.Unmarshal function to let Go do the parsing and type conversions for you based on those struct fields.

Using the encoding/json package, you’ll be able to interact with many of the APIs available on the internet to create your own integrations with popular web sites. You’ll also be able to convert Go data in your own programs into a format you can save and then load later to continue from where the program left off.

In addition to the functions you used in this tutorial, the encoding/json package includes other useful functions and types that can be used for interacting with JSON. The json.MarshalIndent function, for example, can be used to pretty print JSON data for troubleshooting.

This tutorial is also part of the DigitalOcean How to Code in Go series. The series covers a number of Go topics, from installing Go for the first time to how to use the language itself.