[go-nuts] pre process json to fit struct

Can you post an example of your JSON and what the output should look like?

If I understand you correctly, then the code below should help.

For now you can use something like

type Location struct {
Type string `json:"myOtherName"`
Coordinates [2]float64 `json:"DoesNotHaveToBeCoordinates"`
}

This will automatically get the field myOtherName into Type and
DoesNotHaveToBeCoordinates into Coordinates without you need to pre-process
anything.

Or in case the most outter is an object that contains an array of elements
that you need in the struct. You can do something like

type Location struct {
Type string `json:"myOtherName"`
Coordinates [2]float64 `json:"DoesNotHaveToBeCoordinates"`
}
type Container struct {
         ListOfLoc []Location `json:"ListOfLocation"`
}

This will allow to to have separate Location slice and you could throw the
Container away afterward.

here is a simple example (real one is march bigger and nested)
*example has error but i dont know why

http://play.golang.org/p/n2wlfAeb4p

oh ,error, I guess because its is mapping to interface{} i need to use
reflection class to reference key/values

Ya, even with reflection, still no idea how to solve this problem

Since you don't parse into a known type (e.g. Actor), the parsed JSON gives
you a map[string]interface{},
so to access the members you need to convert to map[string]interface{} and
then access the map:
http://play.golang.org/p/e3551KxNC3

of course you don't have type safety here,
you would need to recursively convert each element by hand, (should check
for correct conversion!)
i.e. the "account" is itself a map[string]interface{} :
  accountMap := actorMap["account"].(map[string]interface{})

Another way to do this, would be to also have a definition for the struct
where you have a single Account :
type ActorSingleAccount struct {
Name string `json:"name,omitempty"`
Account Account `json:"account,omitempty"`
}
type Actor struct {
Name string `json:"name,omitempty"`
Accounts []*Account `json:"account,omitempty"`
}
then you could try to parse an Actor, if it fails, try with an
ActorSingleAccount.
http://play.golang.org/p/vMjPY-b6HQ

You still have to copy from ActorSingleAccount to Actor though,
but at least you get the right types w/o having to manually convert to
proper type and check that it worked

I don't know if this can apply to your real world situation ??

Well Think I got a solution,

take json, convert to map interface{}, check if element is object or array,
wrap object as array, convert back to string (wish there was a way to skip
this step), convert string to correct struct.

http://play.golang.org/p/iAHwWBjXhd