How to print struct variables in console?

my 2cents would be to use json.MarshalIndent -- surprised this isn't suggested, as it is the most straightforward. for example:

func prettyPrint(i interface{}) string {
    s, _ := json.MarshalIndent(i, "", "\t")
    return string(s)
}

no external deps and results in nicely formatted output.


To print the name of the fields in a struct:

fmt.Printf("%+v\n", yourProject)

From the fmt package:

when printing structs, the plus flag (%+v) adds field names

That supposes you have an instance of Project (in 'yourProject')

The article JSON and Go will give more details on how to retrieve the values from a JSON struct.


This Go by example page provides another technique:

type Response2 struct {
  Page   int      `json:"page"`
  Fruits []string `json:"fruits"`
}

res2D := &Response2{
    Page:   1,
    Fruits: []string{"apple", "peach", "pear"}}
res2B, _ := json.Marshal(res2D)
fmt.Println(string(res2B))

That would print:

{"page":1,"fruits":["apple","peach","pear"]}

If you don't have any instance, then you need to use reflection to display the name of the field of a given struct, as in this example.

type T struct {
    A int
    B string
}

t := T{23, "skidoo"}
s := reflect.ValueOf(&t).Elem()
typeOfT := s.Type()

for i := 0; i < s.NumField(); i++ {
    f := s.Field(i)
    fmt.Printf("%d: %s %s = %v\n", i,
        typeOfT.Field(i).Name, f.Type(), f.Interface())
}

I want to recommend go-spew, which according to their github "Implements a deep pretty printer for Go data structures to aid in debugging"

go get -u github.com/davecgh/go-spew/spew

usage example:

package main

import (
    "github.com/davecgh/go-spew/spew"
)

type Project struct {
    Id      int64  `json:"project_id"`
    Title   string `json:"title"`
    Name    string `json:"name"`
    Data    string `json:"data"`
    Commits string `json:"commits"`
}

func main() {

    o := Project{Name: "hello", Title: "world"}
    spew.Dump(o)
}

output:

(main.Project) {
 Id: (int64) 0,
 Title: (string) (len=5) "world",
 Name: (string) (len=5) "hello",
 Data: (string) "",
 Commits: (string) ""
}

I think it would be better to implement a custom stringer if you want some kind of formatted output of a struct

for example

package main

    import "fmt"

    type Project struct {
        Id int64 `json:"project_id"`
        Title string `json:"title"`
        Name string `json:"name"`
    }

    func (p Project) String() string {
        return fmt.Sprintf("{Id:%d, Title:%s, Name:%s}", p.Id, p.Title, p.Name)
    }

    func main() {
        o := Project{Id: 4, Name: "hello", Title: "world"}
        fmt.Printf("%+v\n", o)
    }

Tags:

Struct

Go