Constructors in Go

Question

I have a struct and I would like it to be initialised with some sensible default values.

Typically, the thing to do here is to use a constructor but since go isn\'t

Answer 1

There are some equivalents of constructors for when the zero values can't make sensible default values or for when some parameter is necessary for the struct initialization.

Supposing you have a struct like this :

type Thing struct {
    Name  string
    Num   int
}

then, if the zero values aren't fitting, you would typically construct an instance with a NewThing function returning a pointer :

func NewThing(someParameter string) *Thing {
    p := new(Thing)
    p.Name = someParameter
    p.Num = 33 // <- a very sensible default value
    return p
}

When your struct is simple enough, you can use this condensed construct :

func NewThing(someParameter string) *Thing {
    return &Thing{someParameter, 33}
}

If you don't want to return a pointer, then a practice is to call the function makeThing instead of NewThing :

func makeThing(name string) Thing {
    return Thing{name, 33}
}

Reference : Allocation with new in Effective Go.