cannot convert data (type interface {}) to type string: need type assertion

Question

I am pretty new to go and I was playing with this notify package.

At first I had code that looked like this:

func doit(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http         


        

Answer 1

Type Assertion

This is known as type assertion in golang, and it is a common practice.

Here is the explanation from a tour of go:

A type assertion provides access to an interface value's underlying concrete value.

t := i.(T)

This statement asserts that the interface value i holds the concrete type T and assigns the underlying T value to the variable t.

If i does not hold a T, the statement will trigger a panic.

To test whether an interface value holds a specific type, a type assertion can return two values: the underlying value and a boolean value that reports whether the assertion succeeded.

t, ok := i.(T)

If i holds a T, then t will be the underlying value and ok will be true.

If not, ok will be false and t will be the zero value of type T, and no panic occurs.

NOTE: value i should be interface type.

Pitfalls

Even if i is an interface type, []i is not interface type. As a result, in order to convert []i to its value type, we have to do it individually:

// var items []i
for _, item := range items {
    value, ok := item.(T)
    dosomethingWith(value)
}

Performance

As for performance, it can be slower than direct access to the actual value as show in this stackoverflow answer.