How to parse non standard time format from json

Question

lets say i have the following json

{
    name: "John",
    birth_date: "1996-10-07"
}

and i want to decode it into the following structure

type Person struct {
    Name string `json:"name"`
    BirthDate time.Time `json:"birth_date"`
}

like this

person := Person{}

decoder := json.NewDecoder(req.Body);

if err := decoder.Decode(&person); err != nil {
    log.Println(err)
}

which gives me the error parsing time ""1996-10-07"" as ""2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00"": cannot parse """ as "T"

if i were to parse it manually i would do it like this

t, err := time.Parse("2006-01-02", "1996-10-07")

but when the time value is from a json string how do i get the decoder to parse it in the above format?

Answer 1

That's a case when you need to implement custom marshal and unmarshal functions.

UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) error { ... }

MarshalJSON() ([]byte, error) { ... }

By following the example in the Golang documentation of json package you get something like:

// First create a type alias
type JsonBirthDate time.Time

// Add that to your struct
type Person struct {
    Name string `json:"name"`
    BirthDate JsonBirthDate `json:"birth_date"`
}

// Implement Marshaler and Unmarshaler interface
func (j *JsonBirthDate) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) error {
    s := strings.Trim(string(b), "\"")
    t, err := time.Parse("2006-01-02", s)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    *j = JsonBirthDate(t)
    return nil
}
    
func (j JsonBirthDate) MarshalJSON() ([]byte, error) {
    return json.Marshal(time.Time(j))
}

// Maybe a Format function for printing your date
func (j JsonBirthDate) Format(s string) string {
    t := time.Time(j)
    return t.Format(s)
}

Answer 2

If there are lots of struct and you just implement custom marshal und unmarshal functions, that's a lot of work to do so. You can use another lib instead，such as a json-iterator extension jsontime:

import "github.com/liamylian/jsontime"

var json = jsontime.ConfigWithCustomTimeFormat

type Book struct {
    Id        int           `json:"id"`
    UpdatedAt *time.Time    `json:"updated_at" time_format:"sql_date" time_utc:"true"`
    CreatedAt time.Time     `json:"created_at" time_format:"sql_datetime" time_location:"UTC"`
}

Answer 3

I wrote a package for handling yyyy-MM-dd and yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss dates at https://github.com/a-h/date

It uses the type alias approach in the answer above, then implements the MarshalJSON and UnmarshalJSON functions with a few alterations.

// MarshalJSON outputs JSON.
func (d YYYYMMDD) MarshalJSON() ([]byte, error) {
    return []byte("\"" + time.Time(d).Format(formatStringYYYYMMDD) + "\""), nil
}

// UnmarshalJSON handles incoming JSON.
func (d *YYYYMMDD) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) (err error) {
    if err = checkJSONYYYYMMDD(string(b)); err != nil {
        return
    }
    t, err := time.ParseInLocation(parseJSONYYYYMMDD, string(b), time.UTC)
    if err != nil {
        return
    }
    *d = YYYYMMDD(t)
    return
}

It's important to parse in the correct timezone. My code assumes UTC, but you may wish to use the computer's timezone for some reason.

I also found that solutions which involved using the time.Parse function leaked Go's internal mechanisms as an error message which clients didn't find helpful, for example: cannot parse "sdfdf-01-01" as "2006". That's only useful if you know that the server is written in Go, and that 2006 is the example date format, so I put in more readable error messages.

I also implemented the Stringer interface so that it gets pretty printed in log or debug messages.