Golang Web Apps
This is a short simple guide about using golang for web application development.
The idea is that we start with the straight golang net/http package and slowly develop a more complex web application each time as our needs grow. Adding a component, or functionality to the system to solve the identified need.
All code can be found at https://github.com/reinbach/golang-webapp-guide
Basics
Firstly we start with the absolute basics. Which is to handle a request and return a response.
#!golang
package main
import (
"io"
"log"
"net/http"
)
func Home(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
io.WriteString(w, "Hello World!")
}
func main() {
http.HandleFunc("/", Home)
err := http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal("ListenAndServe: ", err)
}
}
Save the above to a file (eg: server.go) and then you can run it with the following;
go run server.go
And pointing our browser at http://localhost:8000 you will get the following response;
Hello World!
Awesome, we have a web application! Sadly it only returns string responses, and we want more. We want to return HTML, so it looks like a proper website.
HTML
To convert to HTML responses we replace the “io” package with the “html/template” package. We also want more than 1 page in our website. So we create a function to render the HTML templates, to keep things a little DRY, update the Home function, and add an About page. Now our server.go file looks like the following.
#!golang
package main
import (
"fmt"
"html/template"
"log"
"net/http"
)
func Home(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
render(w, "index.html")
}
func About(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
render(w, "about.html")
}
func render(w http.ResponseWriter, tmpl string) {
tmpl = fmt.Sprintf("templates/%s", tmpl)
t, err := template.ParseFiles(tmpl)
if err != nil {
log.Print("template parsing error: ", err)
}
err = t.Execute(w, "")
if err != nil {
log.Print("template executing error: ", err)
}
}
func main() {
http.HandleFunc("/", Home)
http.HandleFunc("/about/", About)
err := http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal("ListenAndServe: ", err)
}
}
Don’t forget we need to add the index.html and about.html file. In the same directory as the server.go file create a templates directory and in that directory place the index.html and about.html files. So we have the following file layout.
.
├── server.go
└── templates
├── about.html
└── index.html
So we have HTML pages, but they are lacking. We need to add some CSS to give our website some pop. Let’s make use of Bootstrap, it’s a fantastic base to build a website on. At the same time let’s make our templates a little DRYier by using a base.html file and the individual pages having just the content applicable to them.
STATIC
To serve our static content we can make use of http.ServeContent to do all the work for us. The nice thing about this, is that it handles the setting of the Content-Type for us. See the docs for more information.
#!golang
func StaticHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
static_file := req.URL.Path[len(STATIC_URL):]
if len(static_file) != 0 {
f, err := http.Dir(STATIC_ROOT).Open(static_file)
if err == nil {
content := io.ReadSeeker(f)
http.ServeContent(w, req, static_file, time.Now(), content)
return
}
}
http.NotFound(w, req)
}
We also now have a base.html which is used in each response, so we tweak the render function to parse the base.html and pass in the Context to the template.
#!golang
func render(w http.ResponseWriter, tmpl string, context Context) {
context.Static = STATIC_URL
tmpl_list := []string{"templates/base.html",
fmt.Sprintf("templates/%s.html", tmpl)}
t, err := template.ParseFiles(tmpl_list...)
if err != nil {
log.Print("template parsing error: ", err)
}
err = t.Execute(w, context)
if err != nil {
log.Print("template executing error: ", err)
}
}
With those changes we now have the following for our server.go file;
#!golang
package main
import (
"fmt"
"html/template"
"io"
"log"
"net/http"
"time"
)
const STATIC_URL string = "/static/"
const STATIC_ROOT string = "static/"
type Context struct {
Title string
Static string
}
func Home(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
context := Context{Title: "Welcome!"}
render(w, "index", context)
}
func About(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
context := Context{Title: "About"}
render(w, "about", context)
}
func render(w http.ResponseWriter, tmpl string, context Context) {
context.Static = STATIC_URL
tmpl_list := []string{"templates/base.html",
fmt.Sprintf("templates/%s.html", tmpl)}
t, err := template.ParseFiles(tmpl_list...)
if err != nil {
log.Print("template parsing error: ", err)
}
err = t.Execute(w, context)
if err != nil {
log.Print("template executing error: ", err)
}
}
func StaticHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
static_file := req.URL.Path[len(STATIC_URL):]
if len(static_file) != 0 {
f, err := http.Dir(STATIC_ROOT).Open(static_file)
if err == nil {
content := io.ReadSeeker(f)
http.ServeContent(w, req, static_file, time.Now(), content)
return
}
}
http.NotFound(w, req)
}
func main() {
http.HandleFunc("/", Home)
http.HandleFunc("/about/", About)
http.HandleFunc(STATIC_URL, StaticHandler)
err := http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal("ListenAndServe: ", err)
}
}
And our index.html file looks like;
{{ define "content" }}
<div class="page-header">
<h1>{{ .Title }}</h1>
</div>
<p>We have a HTML web page, woot!</p>
{{ end }}
The about.html will look very similar, but with content changed.
And our base.html file looks like;
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Golang WebApp</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ .Static }}css/bootstrap.min.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="{{ .Static }}img/favicon.ico">
</head>
<body>
<nav class="navbar navbar-default" role="navigation">
<div class="container">
<div class="navbar-header">
<a class="navbar-brand" href="/">Golang WebApp</a>
</div>
<div class="collapse navbar-collapse">
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
<li><a href="/about/">About</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</nav>
<div class="container">
{{ template "content" . }}
</div>
</body>
</html>
We have set our static path as a constant in the server.go and are passing it to the base.html template via the context. This allows us to change the path/location of the static content in one location. Don’t forget to download Bootstrap and place the files in the static/ directory. Which should result in the following file layout;
.
├── server.go
├── static
│ ├── css
│ │ ├── bootstrap.min.css
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── fonts
│ │ └── ...
│ ├── img
│ │ └── favicon.ico
│ └── js
│ └── ...
└── templates
├── about.html
├── base.html
└── index.html
Nice, now we have the basis for a decent website that can be styled to our heart’s content. At this point we have the basis for a static website.