Go Application Development – Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

In this video, we’ll explore the Select Statement.

• Understand Go Channels

• Execute the Select Statement

• Add a logger to our application

In this video, we’ll learn the practical and useful application of the Select Statement.

• Understand the problem

• Explore the solutions

• Add custom loggers to the application

In this video, we’ll learn about the observer pattern and how to implement it efficiently using Go Channels.

• Understand the observer pattern

• Implement observer pattern

• Show how to manipulate custom levels with JConsole

In this video, we’ll learn about Race Conditions and how we can detect them.

• Understand Race Condition

In this video, we’ll learn how to prevent the Race Conditions by using the features offered by the sync package.

• Understand Mutual Exclusion

Often, JSON data should be either read directly from a stream or written directly into a stream. This video explains the usage of the “json.Decoder” and “json.Encoder” types to accomplish this.

• Recapitulate on the “io.Reader” and “io.Writer” interfaces

• Use the “json.Encoder” and “json.Decoder” types

• Outlook on other data encoding libraries (YAML, XML, and others)

This video shows how to circumvent Go’s automatic JSON encoding using manual encoding and decoding (and when this is useful).

• Introduce the “json.Marshaler” and “json.Unmarshaler” interfaces

• Practical use case: Marshaling

• Practical use case: Unmarshaling

This video shows how to use Go’s JSON decoder in a non-typesafe way and explains when this might be necessary.

• Explain when it might be necessary to decode into an interface{} value

• Explain how to do that

• Show common pitfalls and caveats

There are many open-source JSON libraries that can be used as an alternative to Go’s built-in library. This video shows some of them and explains their advantages.

• Use cases for alternative JSON libraries

• Using the “EasyJSON” library

• Use the “Jason” library

Defining JSON types is often time-consuming and error prone. This video shows how to use a tool to automate this.

• Introduce GoJSON

• Show how to use GoJSON

Unit Tests are used to automatically test individual units of code for functionality. This video explains how to write and execute them.

• What are Unit Tests?

• Write and execute Tests

• Assertions made easy

Unit test coverage is an important metric to assert how much of your code is covered by tests. This video explains how to measure it.

• What is Test Coverage?

• Run tests with coverage measurement

• Create a graphical evaluation of test coverage

Mocks are a common way to test units of a program in isolation. This video shows how to create them and introduces libraries to make mocking easier.

• Understand mocking

• How to mock an interface?

• Create mocks automatically with mockgen

The CPU profiler is a useful tool to determine which part of your program uses how much CPU time. This video explains how to integrate it into your program and how to interpret the results.

• How to integrate the CPU profiler into your program?

• Create a CPU profile

• Analyze and interpret a CPU profile

Just as the CPU profiler, the memory profiler is a useful tool to determine how much memory is allocated by which parts of your program. This video explains how to integrate it into your program and how to interpret the results.

• How to integrate the memory profiler into your program?

• Create a memory profile

• Analyze and interpret a memory profile

A debugger is a good tool to have when things aren’t going your way. This video introduces the Delve debugger and shows how to use it.

• Purpose of a Debugger

• Use Delve on the command-line

• Use Delve in VS code

Gofmt introduces a common coding standard for Go that can be enforced with a simple tool. This video shows how to use it.

• What are coding standards?

• Difference between “gofmt” and “go fmt”

• Use gofmt

This video shows how to use Govet – a useful tool to find common coding errors in your program.

• What is govet?

• How to use govet?

• What does govet check for?

Golint is a tool to check for common stylistic errors in Go code. This video shows how to use it.

• What is golint?

• How to use golint?

• What does golint check for?

The cyclomatic complexity is a useful metric to measure how complicated individual units of your program are. This video shows how to measure it.

• Define cyclomatic complexity

• How to use gocyclo?

• Recommendations on how to handle complexity

Go’s error handling by passing errors as return values is unique; however, forgetting to check for returned errors is a common rookie mistake. This video introduces errcheck, a tool that automatically checks for unchecked errors.

• Recap: Error handling in Go

• How to use errcheck?

This video introduces gosec, a tool to automatically find common security issues in a Go program.

• How to use gosec?

• What does gosec check for?

• Recommendation concerning reliance on tools for security

Go modules are a new standard introduced in Go 1.11 to manage dependencies across packages. This video shows how to use them.

• History of the $GOPATH and vendoring

• Intro in Go modules

• Using Go modules

When distributing your software for other operating systems and platforms, you’ll have to cross-compile your application. This video shows to cross-compile using the Go compiler.

• Use $GOOS and $GOARCH

• Use build constraints

Container images are a common way of deploying software. In this video, you’ll learn how to build a minimal Docker image for your Go binary.

• Structure of a container image

• Build your application with a multi-stage build

• Package a container image based on the “scratch” image

Releasing software is complicated, especially when targeting multiple operating systems and deployment mechanisms. This video shows how to use GoReleaser, which can automate building your application for multiple targets at once.

• A typical release process

• Introduce GoReleaser

• Practical example on how to use GoReleaser

This video combines many of the tools shown in the previous video and demonstrates how to build a complete CI pipeline for a Go project.

• Parts of a CI pipeline

• Build a CI pipeline for GitLab CI

• Show everything in action