[ANN] go-rest A small and evil REST framework for Go

[Erik Unger]

Reflection, Go structs, and JSON marshalling FTW!

https://github.com/ungerik/go-rest

Small?

Yes, the framework consists of only three functions:

HandleGet, HandlePost, RunServer.

Evil?

Well, this package can be considered bad design because

HandleGet and HandlePost use dynamic typing to hide 36 combinations

of handler function/method types to make the interface _easy_ to use.

36 static functions would have been more lines of code but

dramatic _simpler_ in their individual implementations.

So simple in fact, that there wouldn't be a point in

abstracting them away in an extra framework.

See this great talk about easy vs. simple:

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

Rob Pike may also dislike this approach:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/z4T_n4MHbXM/jT9PoYc6I1IJ

So yes, this package can be called evild because it is an

anti-pattern to all that is good and right about Go.

Why use it then? By maximizing dynamic code

it is easy to use and reduces code.

Yes, that introduces some internal complexity,

but this complexity is still very low in absolute terms

and thus easy to control and debug.

The complexity of the dynamic code also does not spill over

into the package users' code, because the arguments and

results of the handler functions must be static typed

and can't be interface{}.