Idiomatic way to validate structs

Question

I need to validate that a struct value is correct and this means I need to check every field individually, which is easy for a small number of small structs but I was wondering if there's a better way to do it. Here's how I'm doing it right now.

type Event struct {
    Id     int
    UserId int
    Start  time.Time
    End    time.Time
    Title  string
    Notes  string
}

func (e Event) IsValid() error {
    if e.Id <= 0 {
        return errors.New("Id must be greater than 0")
    }
    if e.UserId <= 0 {
        return errors.New("UserId must be greater than 0")
    }
    if e.End <= e.Start {
        return errors.New("End must be after Start")
    }
    if e.Start < time.Now() {
        return errors.New("Cannot create events in the past")
    }
    if e.Title == "" {
        return errors.New("Title cannot be empty")
    }
    return nil
}

Is this the idiomatic way to validate the values of fields in a struct? It looks cumbersome.

Answer 1

I don't see any other way to do this quickly. But I found a go package which can help you with this: https://github.com/go-validator/validator

The README file gives this example:

type NewUserRequest struct {
    Username string `validator:"min=3,max=40,regexp=^[a-zA-Z]$"`
    Name string     `validator:"nonzero"`
    Age int         `validator:"min=21"`
    Password string `validator:"min=8"`
}

nur := NewUserRequest{Username: "something", Age: 20}
if valid, errs := validator.Validate(nur); !valid {
    // values not valid, deal with errors here
}

Answer 2

Doing that way you will end up writing a lot of duplicate code for each of your model.

Using a library with tags comes with its own pros and cons. Sometimes is easy to start but down the road you hit the library limitations.

One possible approach is to create a "Validator" that its only responsibility is to keep track of the possible errors inside an object.

A very approximate stub of this idea:

http://play.golang.org/p/buBUzk5z6I

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

type Event struct {
    Id     int
    UserId int
    Start  time.Time
    End    time.Time
    Title  string
    Notes  string
}

type Validator struct {
    err error
}

func (v *Validator) MustBeGreaterThan(high, value int) bool {
    if v.err != nil {
        return false
    }
    if value <= high {
        v.err = fmt.Errorf("Must be Greater than %d", high)
        return false
    }
    return true
}

func (v *Validator) MustBeBefore(high, value time.Time) bool {
    if v.err != nil {
        return false
    }
    if value.After(high) {
        v.err = fmt.Errorf("Must be Before than %v", high)
        return false
    }
    return true
}

func (v *Validator) MustBeNotEmpty(value string) bool {
    if v.err != nil {
        return false
    }
    if value == "" {
        v.err = fmt.Errorf("Must not be Empty")
        return false
    }
    return true
}

func (v *Validator) IsValid() bool {
    return v.err != nil
}

func (v *Validator) Error() string {
    return v.err.Error()
}

func main() {
    v := new(Validator)
    e := new(Event)
    v.MustBeGreaterThan(e.Id, 0)
    v.MustBeGreaterThan(e.UserId, 0)
    v.MustBeBefore(e.End, e.Start)
    v.MustBeNotEmpty(e.Title)
    if !v.IsValid() {
        fmt.Println(v)
    } else {
    fmt.Println("Valid")
    }
}
package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

type Event struct {
    Id     int
    UserId int
    Start  time.Time
    End    time.Time
    Title  string
    Notes  string
}

type Validator struct {
    err error
}

func (v *Validator) MustBeGreaterThan(high, value int) bool {
    if v.err != nil {
        return false
    }
    if value <= high {
        v.err = fmt.Errorf("Must be Greater than %d", high)
        return false
    }
    return true
}

func (v *Validator) MustBeBefore(high, value time.Time) bool {
    if v.err != nil {
        return false
    }
    if value.After(high) {
        v.err = fmt.Errorf("Must be Before than %v", high)
        return false
    }
    return true
}

func (v *Validator) MustBeNotEmpty(value string) bool {
    if v.err != nil {
        return false
    }
    if value == "" {
        v.err = fmt.Errorf("Must not be Empty")
        return false
    }
    return true
}

func (v *Validator) IsValid() bool {
    return v.err != nil
}

func (v *Validator) Error() string {
    return v.err.Error()
}

func main() {
    v := new(Validator)
    e := new(Event)
    v.MustBeGreaterThan(e.Id, 0)
    v.MustBeGreaterThan(e.UserId, 0)
    v.MustBeBefore(e.End, e.Start)
    v.MustBeNotEmpty(e.Title)
    if !v.IsValid() {
        fmt.Println(v)
    } else {
    fmt.Println("Valid")
    }
}

You can then create your Validate method and use the same code:

func (e *Event) IsValid() error {
        v := new(Validator)
    v.MustBeGreaterThan(e.Id, 0)
    v.MustBeGreaterThan(e.UserId, 0)
    v.MustBeBefore(e.End, e.Start)
    v.MustBeNotEmpty(e.Title)
    return v.IsValid()
}

Answer 3

To help anyone else that may be looking for another validation library I created the following https://github.com/bluesuncorp/validator

It addresses some issues that other plugins have not implemented yet that others in this thread had mentioned such as:

• Returning all validation errors
• multiple validations per field
• cross field validation ex. Start > End date

Inspired by several other projects including the accepted answer of go-validator/validator

Answer 4

I'd write explicit code rather than use a validation library. The advantage of writing your own code is that you don't add an extra dependency, you don't need to learn a DSL, and you can check properties of your structs that are dependent on multiple fields (for example, that start < end).

To cut down on the boilerplate, I might extract a function that adds an error message to a slice of errors in the case an invariant is false.

func check(ea *[]string, c bool, errMsg string, ...args) {
    if !c { *ea = append(*ea, fmt.Sprintf(errMsg, ...args)) }
}

func (e *Event) Validate() error {
    var ea []string
    check(&ea, e.ID >= 0, "want positive ID, got %d", e.ID)
    check(&ea, e.Start < e.End, "want start < end, got %s >= %s", e.Start, e.End)
    ...
    if len(ea) > 0 {
        return errors.New(strings.Join(ea, ", "))
    }
    return nil
 }

This returns all ways the struct fails validation rather than just the first, which may or may not be what you want.