CTO and co-founder of Signal Sciences. Author and speaker on software engineering, devops, and security.

Golang and Gracefully Handling Lists in Configuration Files

How to handle a single value or an array for a single configuration element.

Most configuration files are processed using ‘object unmarshaling’ (or deserialization) into internal data structures. While this is easy and fast, it’s not very flexible for configuration. In most cases a “single value” and an element with a single value are treated differently.

For example: (I’m using JSON as an example but I don’t recommend it for actual configuration file):

type Bar struct {
    Order: []string
}

This is an error:

{  "Order": "Yamazaki" }

Instead you have to use array notation:

{  "Order": [ "Yamazaki" ]  }

That’s awkward and error-prone if there is normally only one item. The additional array markup obscures the actual data, and forces the customer to understand your internal data structure.

However, you can allow both forms, by encapulating the internal structure with one specifically for configuration. And you can provide a better error message when the input is completely wrong.

type BarConfig struct {
    Order: interface{}
}

func NewFromConfig(c BarConfig) (*Bar, error) {
    newc := Bar{}
    switch c.Order.(type) {
    case []string:
        newc.Order = c.Order.([]string)
    case string:
        newc.Order - []string{c.Order.(string)}
    default:
        return nil, new.Errorf("Order should be a string, or an array of strings")
    }
    return &newc, nil
}

It’s a lot of work bullet-proofing the configuration file, but user-interface is hard, no matter where it is! More Yamazaki for everyone!

golang

© 2018 Nick Galbreath