This package provides types representing updates to struct fields, distinguishing between no-ops, removals, and modifications when marshalling those updates to/from JSON.
See godoc for usage and examples.
It's often useful to define data updates using JSON objects, where each
key-value pair represents an update to a field, using a value of null
to
indicate deletion. If a certain key is not present, the corresponding field is
not modified. We want to define go structs corresponding to these updates, which
need to be marshalled to/from JSON.
If we were to use pointer fields with the omitempty
JSON struct tag option for
these structs, then fields explicitly set to nil
to be removed would instead
simply be absent from the marshalled JSON, i.e. unchanged. If we were to use
pointer fields without omitempty
, then nil
fields would be present and
null
in the JSON output, i.e. removed.
The Update
and SliceUpdate
types distinguish between no-op and removal
updates, allowing them to correctly and seamlessly unmarshal themselves from
JSON.
This package can be imported into a module-aware Go project as follows:
go get github.com/nicheinc/nullable/v2
See CONTRIBUTING.md for details on contributing to the nup
package.