Decoding generic JSON objects to one of many formats

Question

I am working on a general JSON based message passing protocol in Go. What I would like to do is have a BaseMessage that has general information like Type, timestamp, etc. But at the same time I want to be able to define more specific message structures for certain types of data.

For example:

type Message struct {
    Type      string `json:type`
    Timestamp string `json:timestamp`

}

type EventMessage struct {
    Message
    EventType string
    EventCreator string
    EventData interface{}
}

I have a set of handlers and to determine which handler should process the message I decode the JSON to the general Message type first to check the Type field. For this example I would get the handler associated with an "Event" message type.

I run into problems when I then want to assert the EventMessage type onto the structure.

The following code is very rough, but hopefully it displays my general idea of how I am trying to handle the messages.

type Handler func(msg Message) Message
handlers := make(map[string]Handler)

var msg Message
decoder.Decode(&msg)
handler := handlers[msg.Type]
handler(msg)

I have tried to use an interface{} but then the JSON decoder just creates a map which I then cant assert either type on. I have figured out workarounds that make it possible, but its very ugly, probably not efficient, and most likely error prone. I would like to keep things simple and straightforward so this code can be easily maintained.

Is there a method of handling generic JSON objects in Go so that the decoded JSON could be one of many struct formats?

I have also played with the idea of having more specific info in a Data interface{} in the main Message struct, but then I run into the same problem of not being able to assert any types onto the interface. There has to be a better way to handle JSON formats that I am just missing.

Answer 1

One way to handle this is to define a struct for the fixed part of the message with a json.RawMessage field to capture the variant part of the message. Decode the json.RawMessage to a type specific to the variant:

type Message struct {
  Type      string `json:"type"`
  Timestamp string `json:"timestamp"`
  Data      json.RawMessage
}  

type Event struct {
   Type    string `json:"type"`
   Creator string `json:"creator"`
}


var m Message
if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &m); err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}
switch m.Type {
case "event":
    var e Event
    if err := json.Unmarshal([]byte(m.Data), &e); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    fmt.Println(m.Type, e.Type, e.Creator)
default:
    log.Fatal("bad message type")
}

playground example