Building RESTful APIs in Go: A Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction

RESTful APIs are the backbone of modern web applications, enabling communication between different services. Go, with its powerful net/http package, provides a straightforward way to build these APIs. In this article, we’ll walk through creating a RESTful API in Go, complete with routing, middleware, and JSON handling.

Setting Up Your Project

To start, create a new Go module:

go mod init myapi

Next, create a basic server that listens on port 8080:

package main

import (
    "net/http"
    "log"
)

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/api/hello", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        w.Write([]byte("Hello, World!"))
    })

    log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil))
}

Routing with Gorilla Mux

For more advanced routing, you can use the Gorilla Mux package:

go get -u github.com/gorilla/mux

import (
    "github.com/gorilla/mux"
)

r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/api/hello", helloHandler).Methods("GET")

Middleware for Enhanced Functionality

Middleware functions can be used to add additional processing to your routes, such as logging or authentication:

func loggingMiddleware(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {…