A package in Go is a namespace that organizes a set of related files. We can think of packages as being similar to different folders. Go standard library comes with a number of packages which can be used for building real-world applications. Moreover Go supports writing our own packages promoting code modularization and better composability of applications following certain rules, like all source files within the package must declare the same package-name. Identifiers, Function and Types will be exported to other packages if the first letter of the identifier name starts with an uppercase letter.
In post Creating HTTP Server in Go we already updated Path with GOROOT, GOPATH and GOBIN, so as part of this post we will simply start with creating a package in Go following below steps:
Step 1: Create a directory inside your workspace to keep source code of a package, for me it’s numberutil under $GOPATH/github.com/arpitaggarwal:
$ mkdir -p $GOPATH/github.com/arpitaggarwal/numberutil
Step 2: Move to directory we created in previous step and create a file named decimalTobinary.go inside it, as follows:
$ cd $GOPATH/github.com/arpitaggarwal/numberutil $ touch decimalTobinary.go
Copy following Go code:
package numberutil
import "strconv"
//Convert Decimal to Binary
func DecimalToBinary(decimal int64) string {
binary := strconv.FormatInt(decimal, 2)
return binary
}Above code contains a single go function which takes Decimal number as input and convert it to Binary using strconv.FormatInt function.
Step 3: Build numberutil package using go tool, as follows:
$ cd $GOPATH $ go build github.com/arpitaggarwal/numberutil
Step 4: Next we will create number-util.go with a main() method to use DecimalToBinary function from numberutil package we created, as follows:
$ cd $GOPATH/github.com/arpitaggarwal/ $ touch number-util.go
Copy following Go code:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"github.com/arpitaggarwal/numberutil"
)
func main() {
i23 := int64(23)
fmt.Printf("Decimal to Binary for 23 is %s \n", numberutil.DecimalToBinary(i23))
}Step 5: Install number-util.go using go tool:
$ go install $GOPATH/github.com/arpitaggarwal/number-util.go
Above command compile number-util.go and generate executable binary file of it in $GOROOT/bin or $GOBIN directory.
Step 6: Run number-util.go moving to golang directory:
$ cd golang $ ./go/bin/number-util
Step 7: Now we will generate documentation of numberutil package we created which is as simple as running godoc tool with -http flag for the port number from the terminal, as follows:
godoc -http=:9999
Now, opening http://localhost:9999/pkg/github.com/arpitaggarwal/numberutil/ in browser will show us the documentation of numberutil package we have created.
Go also support using third party libraries or packages by installing them using go get command or copying it manually to $GOPATH/src or $GOPATH for example, If we want to use Reverse function from “github.com/golang/example/stringutil” package which is not available by default in go standard library then we can install it as:
$ cd golang $ go get github.com/golang/example/stringutil
Or clone the package and copy it to $GOPATH/src or $GOPATH directory, then use it as:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"github.com/golang/example/stringutil"
)
func main() {
fmt.Println(stringutil.Reverse("!olleh"))
}Complete source code is hosted on github
| Reference: | Creating Your Own Package in Go from our JCG partner Arpit Aggarwal at the Arpit Aggarwal blog. |
