Iterate Over String Fields in Struct

What you want is primarily the methods on reflect.Value called NumFields() int and Field(int). The only thing you're really missing is the string check and SetString method.

package main

import "fmt"
import "reflect"
import "strings"

type MyStruct struct {
    A,B,C string
    I int
    D string
    J int
}

func main() {
    ms := MyStruct{"Green ", " Eggs", " and ", 2, " Ham      ", 15}
    // Print it out now so we can see the difference
    fmt.Printf("%s%s%s%d%s%d\n", ms.A, ms.B, ms.C, ms.I, ms.D, ms.J)

    // We need a pointer so that we can set the value via reflection
    msValuePtr := reflect.ValueOf(&ms)
    msValue := msValuePtr.Elem()

    for i := 0; i < msValue.NumField(); i++ {
        field := msValue.Field(i)

        // Ignore fields that don't have the same type as a string
        if field.Type() != reflect.TypeOf("") {
            continue
        }

        str := field.Interface().(string)
        str = strings.TrimSpace(str)
        field.SetString(str)
    }
    fmt.Printf("%s%s%s%d%s%d\n", ms.A, ms.B, ms.C, ms.I, ms.D, ms.J)
}

(Playground link)

There are two caveats here:

  1. You need a pointer to what you're going to change. If you have a value, you'll need to return the modified result.

  2. Attempts to modify unexported fields generally will cause reflect to panic. If you plan on modifying unexported fields, make sure to do this trick inside the package.

This code is rather flexible, you can use switch statements or type switches (on the value returned by field.Interface()) if you need differing behavior depending on the type.

Edit: As for the tag behavior, you seem to already have that figured out. Once you have field and have checked that it's a string, you can just use field.Tag.Get("max") and parse it from there.

Edit2: I made a small error on the tag. Tags are part of the reflect.Type of a struct, so to get them you can use (this is a bit long-winded) msValue.Type().Field(i).Tag.Get("max")

(Playground version of the code you posted in the comments with a working Tag get).


I got beat to the punch, but since I went to the work, here's a solution:

type FormError []*string

type Listing struct {
    Title        string `max:"50"`
    Location     string `max:"100"`
    Description  string `max:"10000"`
    ExpiryDate   time.Time
    RenderedDesc template.HTML
    Contact      string `max:"255"`
}

// Iterate over our struct, fix whitespace/formatting where possible
// and return errors encountered
func (l *Listing) Validate() error {
    listingType := reflect.TypeOf(*l)
    listingValue := reflect.ValueOf(l)
    listingElem := listingValue.Elem()

    var invalid FormError = []*string{}
    // Iterate over fields
    for i := 0; i < listingElem.NumField(); i++ {
        fieldValue := listingElem.Field(i)
        // For StructFields of type string, field = strings.TrimSpace(field)
        if fieldValue.Type().Name() == "string" {
            newFieldValue := strings.TrimSpace(fieldValue.Interface().(string))
            fieldValue.SetString(newFieldValue)

            fieldType := listingType.Field(i)
            maxLengthStr := fieldType.Tag.Get("max")
            if maxLengthStr != "" {
                maxLength, err := strconv.Atoi(maxLengthStr)
                if err != nil {
                    panic("Field 'max' must be an integer")
                }
                //     check max length/convert to int/utf8.RuneCountInString
                if utf8.RuneCountInString(newFieldValue) > maxLength {
                    //     if max length exceeded, invalid = append(invalid, "errormsg")
                    invalidMessage := `"`+fieldType.Name+`" is too long (max allowed: `+maxLengthStr+`)`
                    invalid = append(invalid, &invalidMessage)
                }
            }
        }
    }

    if len(invalid) > 0 {
        return invalid
    }

    return nil
}

func (f FormError) Error() string {
    var fullError string
    for _, v := range f {
        fullError = *v + "\n"
    }
    return "Errors were encountered during form processing: " + fullError
}

I see you asked about how to do the tags. Reflection has two components: a type and a value. The tag is associated with the type, so you have to get it separately than the field: listingType := reflect.TypeOf(*l). Then you can get the indexed field and the tag from that.

Tags:

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