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Boris Jamot ✊ /
Boris Jamot ✊ /

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at mamyn0va.github.io

My Go Toolkit to Build a Frameworkless App

A few months ago, I started my journey from PHP to Go on a new app in my company.

Some 3 months after, I posted another Article on DEV talking about my feedbacks on the language.

Now it's the time to share about the libraries & tools I've been using so far. Note that I don't use any framework nor any ORM. Just the right libraries to do the job.


Libraries

1. Viper

🌠 7,353

GitHub logo spf13 / viper

Go configuration with fangs

Viper v2 feedback

Viper is heading towards v2 and we would love to hear what you would like to see in it. Share your thoughts here: https://forms.gle/R6faU74qPRPAzchZ9

Thank you!

Viper

Mentioned in Awesome Go run on repl.it

GitHub Workflow Status Join the chat at https://gitter.im/spf13/viper Go Report Card Go Version PkgGoDev

Go configuration with fangs!

Many Go projects are built using Viper including:

Install

go get github.com/spf13/viper
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Note: Viper uses Go Modules to manage dependencies.

What is Viper?

Viper is a complete configuration solution for Go applications including 12-Factor apps. It is designed to work within an application, and can handle all types of configuration needs and formats. It supports:

  • setting defaults
  • reading from JSON, TOML, YAML, HCL, envfile and Java properties config files
  • live watching and re-reading of config files (optional)
  • reading from environment variables
  • reading from remote config systems (etcd or Consul), and watching changes
  • reading from command line flags
  • reading…

2. Gin Gonic

🌠 23,913

GitHub logo gin-gonic / gin

Gin is a HTTP web framework written in Go (Golang). It features a Martini-like API with much better performance -- up to 40 times faster. If you need smashing performance, get yourself some Gin.

Gin Web Framework

Build Status codecov Go Report Card Go Reference Sourcegraph Open Source Helpers Release TODOs

Gin is a web framework written in Go. It features a martini-like API with performance that is up to 40 times faster thanks to httprouter If you need performance and good productivity, you will love Gin.

Gin's key features are:

  • Zero allocation router
  • Speed
  • Middleware support
  • Crash-free
  • JSON validation
  • Route grouping
  • Error management
  • Built-in rendering
  • Extensible

Getting started

Prerequisites

Gin requires Go version 1.21 or above.

Getting Gin

With Go's module support, go [build|run|test] automatically fetches the necessary dependencies when you add the import in your code:

import "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
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Alternatively, use go get:

go get -u github.com/gin-gonic/gin
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Running Gin

A basic example:

package main
import (
  "net/http"

  "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
)

func main() {
  r := gin.Default()
  r.GET("/ping", func(c *gin.Context) {
    c.JSON(http.StatusOK,
…
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3. Mgo

🌠 1,385

GitHub logo globalsign / mgo

The MongoDB driver for Go

Build Status GoDoc

The MongoDB driver for Go

This fork has had a few improvements by ourselves as well as several PR's merged from the original mgo repo that are currently awaiting review Changes are mostly geared towards performance improvements and bug fixes, though a few new features have been added.

Further PR's (with tests) are welcome, but please maintain backwards compatibility.

Detailed documentation of the API is available at GoDoc.

A sub-package that implements the BSON specification is also included, and may be used independently of the driver.

Supported Versions

mgo is known to work well on (and has integration tests against) MongoDB v3.0, 3.2, 3.4 and 3.6.

MongoDB 4.0 is currently experimental - we would happily accept PRs to help improve support!

Changes

  • Fixes attempting to authenticate before every query (details)
  • Removes bulk update / delete batch size limitations (details)
  • Adds native support for time.Duration marshalling…

4. Zap

🌠 5,901

GitHub logo uber-go / zap

Blazing fast, structured, leveled logging in Go.

⚑ zap

Blazing fast, structured, leveled logging in Go.

Zap logo

GoDoc Build Status Coverage Status

Installation

go get -u go.uber.org/zap

Note that zap only supports the two most recent minor versions of Go.

Quick Start

In contexts where performance is nice, but not critical, use the SugaredLogger. It's 4-10x faster than other structured logging packages and includes both structured and printf-style APIs.

logger, _ := zap.NewProduction()
defer logger.Sync() // flushes buffer, if any
sugar := logger.Sugar()
sugar.Infow("failed to fetch URL",
  // Structured context as loosely typed key-value pairs.
  "url", url,
  "attempt", 3,
  "backoff", time.Second,
)
sugar.Infof("Failed to fetch URL: %s", url)
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When performance and type safety are critical, use the Logger. It's even faster than the SugaredLogger and allocates far less, but it only…

5. Go.uuid gofrs/uuid

🌠 394

GitHub logo gofrs / uuid

A UUID package for Go

UUID

License Build Status Go Reference Coverage Status Go Report Card CodeQL OpenSSF Best Practices OpenSSF Scorecard

Package uuid provides a pure Go implementation of Universally Unique Identifiers (UUID) variant as defined in RFC-9562. This package supports both the creation and parsing of UUIDs in different formats.

This package supports the following UUID versions:

  • Version 1, based on timestamp and MAC address
  • Version 3, based on MD5 hashing of a named value
  • Version 4, based on random numbers
  • Version 5, based on SHA-1 hashing of a named value
  • Version 6, a k-sortable id based on timestamp, and field-compatible with v1
  • Version 7, a k-sortable id based on timestamp

Project History

This project was originally forked from the github.com/satori/go.uuid repository after it appeared to be no longer maintained, while exhibiting critical flaws. We have decided to take over this project to ensure it receives regular maintenance for the benefit of the larger Go community.

We'd like to thank Maxim Bublis for his hard work on the…

6. JWT-Go

🌠 4,849

GitHub logo dgrijalva / jwt-go

ARCHIVE - Golang implementation of JSON Web Tokens (JWT). This project is now maintained at:

THIS REPOSITORY IS NO LONGER MAINTANED

The new repository can be found at: https://github.com/golang-jwt/jwt

For more information, see issue #462.

jwt-go

Build Status GoDoc

A go (or 'golang' for search engine friendliness) implementation of JSON Web Tokens

NEW VERSION COMING: There have been a lot of improvements suggested since the version 3.0.0 released in 2016. I'm working now on cutting two different releases: 3.2.0 will contain any non-breaking changes or enhancements. 4.0.0 will follow shortly which will include breaking changes. See the 4.0.0 milestone to get an idea of what's coming. If you have other ideas, or would like to participate in 4.0.0, now's the time. If you depend on this library and don't want to be interrupted, I recommend you use your dependency mangement tool to pin to version 3.

SECURITY NOTICE: Some older versions of Go have a security issue in the cryotp/elliptic. Recommendation is to upgrade to at least…

7. Testify

🌠 6,634

GitHub logo stretchr / testify

A toolkit with common assertions and mocks that plays nicely with the standard library

Testify - Thou Shalt Write Tests

ℹ️ We are working on testify v2 and would love to hear what you'd like to see in it, have your say here: https://cutt.ly/testify

Build Status Go Report Card PkgGoDev

Go code (golang) set of packages that provide many tools for testifying that your code will behave as you intend.

Features include:

Get started:

assert package

The assert package provides some helpful methods that allow you to write better test code in Go.

  • Prints friendly, easy to read failure descriptions
  • Allows for very readable code
  • Optionally annotate each assertion with a message

See it in action:

package
…
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8. Go-yaml

🌠 2,692

GitHub logo go-yaml / yaml

YAML support for the Go language.

YAML support for the Go language

Introduction

The yaml package enables Go programs to comfortably encode and decode YAML values. It was developed within Canonical as part of the juju project, and is based on a pure Go port of the well-known libyaml C library to parse and generate YAML data quickly and reliably.

Compatibility

The yaml package supports most of YAML 1.2, but preserves some behavior from 1.1 for backwards compatibility.

Specifically, as of v3 of the yaml package:

  • YAML 1.1 bools (yes/no, on/off) are supported as long as they are being decoded into a typed bool value. Otherwise they behave as a string. Booleans in YAML 1.2 are true/false only.
  • Octals encode and decode as 0777 per YAML 1.1, rather than 0o777 as specified in YAML 1.2, because most parsers still use the old format Octals in the 0o777 format are supported though, so new files…

Tools

1. Gomock + mockgen

🌠 2,023

Gomock is a testing library that allows you to mock your dependencies and to make assertions on them. Mockgen is a CLI tool packaged with gomock to create your mocks.

GitHub logo golang / mock

GoMock is a mocking framework for the Go programming language.

gomock

Update, June 2023: This repo and tool are no longer maintained Please see go.uber.org/mock for a maintained fork instead.

Build Status Go Reference

gomock is a mocking framework for the Go programming language. It integrates well with Go's built-in testing package, but can be used in other contexts too.

Installation

Once you have installed Go, install the mockgen tool.

Note: If you have not done so already be sure to add $GOPATH/bin to your PATH.

To get the latest released version use:

Go version < 1.16

GO111MODULE=on go get github.com/golang/mock/mockgen@v1.6.0
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Go 1.16+

go install github.com/golang/mock/mockgen@v1.6.0
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If you use mockgen in your CI pipeline, it may be more appropriate to fixate on a specific mockgen version. You should try to keep the library in sync with the version of mockgen used to generate your mocks.

Running mockgen

mockgen has two modes of operation: source and reflect.

Source mode

Source…

2. Modd

🌠 977

A file watcher allowing you to restart your app, to run your unit tests and much more

GitHub logo cortesi / modd

A flexible developer tool that runs processes and responds to filesystem changes

Travis Build Status

Modd is a developer tool that triggers commands and manages daemons in response to filesystem changes.

If you use modd, you should also look at devd, a compact HTTP daemon for developers Devd integrates with modd, allowing you to trigger in-browser livereload with modd.

The repo contains a set of example modd.conf files that you can look at for a quick idea of what modd can do:

Example Description
frontend.conf A front-end project with React + Browserify + Babel. Modd and devd replace many functions of Gulp/Grunt.
go.conf Live unit tests for Go.
python.conf Python + Redis, with devd managing livereload.

Install

Modd is a single binary with no external dependencies, released for OSX Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. Go to the releases page, download the package for your OS, and copy the binary to somewhere on your PATH.

Alternatively, with Go 1.17+ installed, you can install…


I hope that you'll find some of these libs/tools useful for your needs.

Don't hesitate to propose the ones you find great.

Thank you for reading!

Top comments (18)

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ladydascalie profile image
Benjamin Cable • Edited

For anyone else reading this: do not use the satori/uuid package.

It has a number of very concerning flaws, with this one being the worst:

Please instead use: github.com/gofrs/uuid


Now on to the topic:

You want to build a Frameworkless App, but you use Gin, which is a framework. This is quite the incompatible premise, would you not say?

I would encourage using gorilla/mux for small niceties on top of the standard library, I personally think it's enough.

Gin introduces too much magic and special "Gin only" behaviour and I personally am not a fan of that.

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exadra37 profile image
Paulo Renato

You want to build a Frameworkless App, but you use Gin, which is a framework. This is quite the incompatible premise, would you not say?

I though exactly the same ;)

For anyone else reading this: do not use the satori/uuid package.
It has a number of very concerning flaws, with this one being the worst:

github.com/satori/go.uuid/issues/73

Please instead use: github.com/gofrs/uuid

Thanks for the security alert :)

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biros profile image
Boris Jamot ✊ /

Thanks for the security alert on using satori/go.uuid.

Regarding gin-gonic, I don't use it as a framework, but just as a router.

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jaakidup profile image
Jaaki

I'd get rid of gin, go really doesn't need frameworks.
There are many people who think you need a framework as soon as you start a new language, but forget that idea with go.

If you're using it just for the router, you could use julien schmidt directly.
I would suggest my own, but I don't think it's ready yet. I need to make sure it's bombproof first.

PS. I also switched from PHP, never looked back.

Happy Coding

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biros profile image
Boris Jamot ✊ /

I switched from gin router to httprouter. It's enough for my needs.
I also dropped viper to use builtin env var funcs.
I also dropped zap to use zerolog which is more simple.
In my toolbox, I gave a chance to gorm which a little ORM for Go.

I have to publish a new edition of my Go toolbox.

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jaakidup profile image
Jaaki

Nice, yes, simplicity is key for me.

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ladydascalie profile image
Benjamin Cable • Edited

I really like it too! However I've been using gorilla/mux on prod for a long time now and it's never been an issue, I really appreciate it's "battle-hardened" quality and feel.

It's one of the rare libraries I feel fully confident with because it's proved itself time and time again.

Not saying this isn't true of chi, just that, that wasn't the choice we made for production back then, so I can't compare it at that level yet.

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bballenn profile image
bballenn

Thanks for sharing these packages πŸ“¦ I’ve been making a few side projects with Go but always spent too much time trying to find the β€œright” libraries to use.

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lucasgeeksinthewood profile image
Lucas Brown

My twin brother started using an open-source project called the SaaS Startup Kit . It is an open-source project of Go code to bootstrap your software-as-a-service startup.

gitlab.com/geeks-accelerator/oss/s...

The goal of this project is to provide a proven approach for building new SaaS that reduces the repetitive tasks in getting a new software service launched to production that can easily be scaled and ready to onboard enterprise clients.

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lysofdev profile image
Esteban HernΓ‘ndez

Great post! Do you have a recommendation on handling dependencies in your Go projects? This has probably been the biggest source of confusion in my experience with Go.

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biros profile image
Boris Jamot ✊ /

Hi Esteban!

I gave a chance to go mod even if the support is still experimental in the 1.11, because it should be stable in the release 1.12.

I bet it will be the future of Go dependency management and will replace go dep.

I found out that go mod is on the good way to be a solid dependency manager for Go. You just have to init your go.mod by typing go mod init and then, every time you'll type go get something, it will add it to your project's dependencies.

It's also a good way to organize your code in modules.

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ifenna__ profile image
Ifenna

This is great stuff. Thanks for sharing! Just starting out with Go myself.

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suciptoid profile image
Sucipto

+1 for chi

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dimensi0n profile image
Erwan ROUSSEL

I created an authentication package here : github.com/dimensi0n/persona (Cookies way only)

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peteraba profile image
Peter Aba

At a first glance it seems very similar to echo which I use for personal projects. I'll try to check how they differ, but if you know, please fill me in.