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variablesgopolymorphism

How to use polymorphism for variables


I am new in Go and started learning about polymorphism.
I know how to do it when multiple objects need to use the same function.
But I have a new problem, I don't know what to do in a case I have the same variable on different objects.

In the following example I have two different objects: struct1 and struct2. Both of them have the same variable name.
I can run over them and check which is which and work accordingly (you can test it here):

package main

import (
    "fmt"
)
type struct1 struct {
    name string
}

type struct2 struct {
    name string
}

func main(){
    structMap := make(map[string]interface{})
    s1 := struct1{name:"struct1_name"}
    s2 := struct2{name:"struct2_name"}
    structMap["struct1"] = s1
    structMap["struct2"] = s2

    for key, _ := range structMap {
        switch key {
            case "struct1":
                generic := structMap[key].(struct1)
                fmt.Println(generic.name)
            case "struct2":
                generic := structMap[key].(struct2)
                fmt.Println(generic.name)
        }
    }
}

But if I had 20 objects ? I would need to do 20 checks?
So I wonder if it possible to do an interface with variables, something like:

type genericStruct interfcae {
   name string
}

...
for key, _ := range structMap {
    generic := structMap[key].(genericStruct)
    fmt.Println(generic.name)

}

Of course this code doesn't work because I don't know how to do it, but I wanted to know about a way to do it.

EDIT:
I tried to use interface based on the example from: https://gobyexample.com/interfaces
Thanks for Robbie Milejczak and the other guys who help me.

This the new working code:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
)
type struct1 struct {
    name string
}

type struct2 struct {
    name string
}

type genericInterface interface {
    GetName() string
}

func (r struct1 ) GetName() string{
    return r.name
}

func (r struct2 ) GetName() string{
    return r.name
}

func printName(g interface{}){
    a := g.(genericInterface)
    fmt.Println(a.GetName())
}

func main(){
    structMap := make(map[string]interface{})
    s1 := struct1{name:"struct1_name"}
    s2 := struct2{name:"struct2_name"}
    structMap["struct1"] = s1
    structMap["struct2"] = s2

    for key, _ := range structMap {
    printName(structMap[key])
    }
}

Solution

  • For this contrived example you could use getters / setters instead of static properties to leverage interfaces:

    type GenericStruct interface {
       GetName() string
    }
    

    And now any struct with a receiver called GetName will satisfy the GenericStruct interface:

    type MyStruct struct {
      Name string
    }
    
    func (ms *MyStruct) GetName() string {
      return ms.Name
    }
    

    This could get messy with more complex structs, in which case you may want to consider the composition suggestion (typically achieved via embedding) or a third party library such as genny