Go Language

Build RESTful API service in golang using gin-gonic framework

Start to write your own Microservices today!

Golang Community Moderator. Software Engineer - Open Source Enthusiast. Goper Lover

Published · May 28 2019

 https://www.nginx.com/blog/introduction-to-microservices/ 

Today I’m going to build a simple API for todo application with the golang programming language. I’m going to use golang simplest/fastest framework gin-gonic and a beautiful ORM gorm for our database work. To install these packages go to your workspace $GOPATH/src and run these command below:
$ go get gopkg.in/gin-gonic/gin.v1
$ go get -u github.com/jinzhu/gorm
$ go get github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql

In generic crud application we need the API’s as follows:
POST todos/
GET todos/
GET todos/{id}
PUT todos/{id}
DELETE todos/{id}

Let’s start coding, go to your $GOPATH/src and make a directory todo. Inside the todo directory create a file main.go. Import the “gin framework” to our project and create the routes like below inside main function. I like to add a prefix of the apis like “api/v1/”, that’s why we’ll use the router Group method
package main

import (
       "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
)
func main() {
router := gin.Default()
v1 := router.Group("/api/v1/todos")
 {
  v1.POST("/", createTodo)
  v1.GET("/", fetchAllTodo)
  v1.GET("/:id", fetchSingleTodo)
  v1.PUT("/:id", updateTodo)
  v1.DELETE("/:id", deleteTodo)
 }
 router.Run()
}

We have created five routes and they handle some functions like createTodo, fetchAllTodo etc. We’ll discuss about them soon.

Now  we need to setup a database connection. To use database pull the gorm  package and mysql dialects in our code. Follow the code below:
package main

import (
       "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
       "github.com/jinzhu/gorm"
       _ "github.com/jinzhu/gorm/dialects/mysql"
)

var db *gorm.DB
func init() {
 //open a db connection
 var err error
 db, err = gorm.Open("mysql", "root:12345@/demo?charset=utf8&parseTime=True&loc=Local")
 if err != nil {
  panic("failed to connect database")
 }
//Migrate the schema
 db.AutoMigrate(&todoModel{})
}

In the above code “mysql” is our database driver, “root” is database  username, “12345” password and “demo” is database name. Please change  these information as your needs.

We’ll use the Database function to get the database connection. Lets make a todoModel and transformedTodo  struct. The first struct will represent the original Todo and the  second one will hold the transformed todo for response to the api. Here  we transformed the todo response because we don’t expose some database  fields (updated_at, created_at) to the consumer.
type (
 // todoModel describes a todoModel type
 todoModel struct {
  gorm.Model
  Title     string `json:"title"`
  Completed int    `json:"completed"`
 }
// transformedTodo represents a formatted todo
 transformedTodo struct {
  ID        uint   `json:"id"`
  Title     string `json:"title"`
  Completed bool   `json:"completed"`
 }
)

Todo struct has one field extra gorm.Model  what does it mean? well, this field will embed a Model struct for us  which contains four fields “ID, CreatedAt, UpdatedAt, DeletedAt”.

Gorm has migration facilities, we already used it in init function. When we run the application first it’ll create a connection and then the migration.
//Migrate the schema
 db.AutoMigrate(&todoModel{})

 Using phpmyadmin 

Can you remember the five routes we wrote a minute earlier? Lets implement the five methods one by one.

When a user send a POST request to the path ‘api/v1/todos/’ with ‘title and completed’ field it’ll be handled by this route v1.POST(“/”, createTodo)
Lets Implement the createTodo function
// createTodo add a new todo
func createTodo(c *gin.Context) {
 completed, _ := strconv.Atoi(c.PostForm("completed"))
 todo := todoModel{Title: c.PostForm("title"), Completed: completed}
 db.Save(&todo)
 c.JSON(http.StatusCreated, gin.H{"status": http.StatusCreated, "message": "Todo item created successfully!", "resourceId": todo.ID})
}

In  the above code we use gin Context to receive the posted data and gorm  database connection to save the todo. After saving the resource we send  the resource id with a good & meaningful response to the user.
Lets implement the rest of the functions
// fetchAllTodo fetch all todos
func fetchAllTodo(c *gin.Context) {
 var todos []todoModel
 var _todos []transformedTodo
db.Find(&todos)
if len(todos) <= 0 {
  c.JSON(http.StatusNotFound, gin.H{"status": http.StatusNotFound, "message": "No todo found!"})
  return
 }
//transforms the todos for building a good response
 for _, item := range todos {
  completed := false
  if item.Completed == 1 {
   completed = true
  } else {
   completed = false
  }
  _todos = append(_todos, transformedTodo{ID: item.ID, Title: item.Title, Completed: completed})
 }
 c.JSON(http.StatusOK, gin.H{"status": http.StatusOK, "data": _todos})
}
// fetchSingleTodo fetch a single todo
func fetchSingleTodo(c *gin.Context) {
 var todo todoModel
 todoID := c.Param("id")
db.First(&todo, todoID)
if todo.ID == 0 {
  c.JSON(http.StatusNotFound, gin.H{"status": http.StatusNotFound, "message": "No todo found!"})
  return
 }
completed := false
 if todo.Completed == 1 {
  completed = true
 } else {
  completed = false
 }
_todo := transformedTodo{ID: todo.ID, Title: todo.Title, Completed: completed}
 c.JSON(http.StatusOK, gin.H{"status": http.StatusOK, "data": _todo})
}
// updateTodo update a todo
func updateTodo(c *gin.Context) {
 var todo todoModel
 todoID := c.Param("id")
db.First(&todo, todoID)
if todo.ID == 0 {
  c.JSON(http.StatusNotFound, gin.H{"status": http.StatusNotFound, "message": "No todo found!"})
  return
 }
db.Model(&todo).Update("title", c.PostForm("title"))
 completed, _ := strconv.Atoi(c.PostForm("completed"))
 db.Model(&todo).Update("completed", completed)
 c.JSON(http.StatusOK, gin.H{"status": http.StatusOK, "message": "Todo updated successfully!"})
}
// deleteTodo remove a todo
func deleteTodo(c *gin.Context) {
 var todo todoModel
 todoID := c.Param("id")
db.First(&todo, todoID)
if todo.ID == 0 {
  c.JSON(http.StatusNotFound, gin.H{"status": http.StatusNotFound, "message": "No todo found!"})
  return
 }
db.Delete(&todo)
 c.JSON(http.StatusOK, gin.H{"status": http.StatusOK, "message": "Todo deleted successfully!"})
}

In the fetchAllTodo function we fetched all the todos and and build a transformed response with id, title, completed . We removed the CreatedAt, UpdatedAt, DeletedAt fields and cast the integer value to bool.
Well,  we write enough code, let try to build the app and test it, I’m going  test it using chrome extension Postman (you can use any REST client like  curl to test).
To build the app open your terminal and go the the project directory

$ go build main.go
The command will build a binary file main and to run the file us this command $ ./main . Wow, our simple todo app is running on port: 8080. It’ll display the debug log, because by default gin run’s in debug mode and port 8080.
To test the api run postman and test the api sequentially

 Create a todo 

 Fetch all todos 

 Fetch a single todo 


 Update a todo 

 Delete a todo 

. . .
Need full source code?


Note: When you are using code production you must take care of the steps below:
Do not fetch all the data select * from todos , use pagination
Do not trust user input. You must validate the inputs, there are severals tools to validate input
Check every possible error
You should use logging and authentication as your need