go-respond

A Go package for handling common HTTP JSON responses.

Installation

go get github.com/nicklaw5/go-respond

Usage

The goal of go-respond is to take most of the grunt work out preparing your JSON response. Here's a simple example:

package main

import (
    "net/http"

    resp "github.com/nicklaw5/go-respond"
)

type User struct {
    ID    int    `json:"id"`
    Name  string `json:"name"`
    Email string `json:"email"`
}

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/api/users", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        users := []User{
            {1, "Billy", "billy@example.com"},
            {2, "Joan", "joan@example.com"},
        }

        resp.NewResponse(w).Ok(users)
    })

    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

Response Methods

Response Code	Method Name
200	Ok()
201	Created()
202	Accepted()
204	NoContent()
400	BadRequest()
401	Unauthorized()
403	Forbidden()
404	NotFound()
405	MethodNotAllowed()
406	NotAcceptable()
409	Conflict()
410	Gone()
411	LengthRequired()
412	PreconditionFailed()
413	RequestEntityTooLarge()
415	UnsupportedMediaType()
422	UnprocessableEntity()
500	InternalServerError()
501	NotImplemented()
502	BadGateway()
503	ServiceUnavailable()
504	GatewayTimeout()

See here for a complete list of HTTP responses, along with an explanation of each.

Please submit a PR if you want to add to this list. Only the most common response types have been included.

To Long, Don't Write

Sometimes you don't need to return a specific content-message but don't want the response body to be empty. In this case you can use the DefaultMessage() for responding with json containing the default message for the corresponding status code.

package main

import (
    "net/http"
    resp "github.com/nicklaw5/go-respond"
)

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/api/users", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        // ...
        if !authenticated {
            resp.NewResponse(w).DefaultMessage().
                Unauthorized(nil)
        }
        // ...
    })
    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

Would respond with {"status":401,"message":"Unauthorized"}

Handling Errors

The best option for handling errors that may occur while marshalling the JSON response, is to use Negroni's Recovery middleware. Here's an example:

package main

import (
    "net/http"

    "github.com/urfave/negroni"
    resp "github.com/nicklaw5/go-respond"
)

type Response struct {
    Success bool `json:"success"`
}

func main() {
    mux := http.NewServeMux()
    mux.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
        resp.NewResponse(w).Ok(&Response{true})
    })

    n := negroni.New()
    recovery := negroni.NewRecovery()
    recovery.ErrorHandlerFunc = func(error interface{}) {
        // do something with the unexpected error
    }

    n.Use(recovery)
    n.UseHandler(mux)

    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", n)
}

License

This package is distributed under the terms of the MIT License.