Go generic: non-ptr to ptr

Thu, Aug 3, 2023 One-minute read

Go generic: non-ptr to ptr

I’m using oapi-codegen and any required fields are set as pointers. This is great for doing nil checks. Initialising structs was more difficult because you cannot create a struct with *string fields like this:

type Foo struct {
    ID *string
}

func main() {
    f := Foo{ID: "123"}
}

This fails because its not a pointer. Usually I’d create a variable like var s *string and then populate the struct using s.

Then I found this great use of generics and am now using it everywhere.

// Ptr takes in non-pointer and returns a pointer
func Ptr[T any](v T) *T {
	return &v
}

// in use 
// a snippet from my tests
{name: "200: OK", method: "GET", url: "/api/v1/devices/device_000000000000", body: "", status: 200,
    want: repository.DeviceResponseJSON{
        Data: oapi.DeviceResponse{
            ApiVersion:      Ptr("not provided"),
            CreatedBy:       Ptr("guest"),
            DeviceActivated: Ptr(false),
            DeviceId:        Ptr("device_000000000000"),
            DeviceName:      Ptr("test_device"),
            DeviceVersion:   Ptr("2.7"),
            HostAddress:     Ptr("192.168.0.1"),
            HttpPort:        Ptr(int32(8080)),
            SshPort:         Ptr(int32(22)),
            TeamId:          Ptr("team_000000000000"),
        },
    },
},

Just made writing tests so much easier.

Tags:

#TIL #generics #golang