viper VS validator

Cobra and Viper.

I've mostly been using https://github.com/spf13/viper of late for my go projects. It supports the standard config formats, (json, yaml, toml etc) and lets you override any value with a ENV value.

Not only that, the "unmarshall to struct" method doesn't work at all for environment variables. https://github.com/spf13/viper/issues/188

IDE: use whatever make you productive. I personally use vscode. VCS: git, as golang communities use github heavily as base for many libraries. AFAIK Linter: use staticcheck for linting as it looks like mostly used linting tool in go, supported by many also. In Vscode it will be recommended once you install go plugin. Libraries/Framework: actually the standard libraries already included many things you need, decent enough for your day-to-day development cycles(e.g. `net/http`). But here are things for extra: - Struct fields validator: validator - Http server lib: chi router , httprouter , fasthttp (for non standard http implementations, but fast) - Web Framework: echo , gin , fiber , beego , etc - Http client lib: most already covered by stdlib(net/http), so you rarely need extra lib for this, but if you really need some are: resty - CLI: cobra - Config: godotenv , viper - DB Drivers: sqlx , postgre , sqlite , mysql - nosql: redis , mongodb , elasticsearch - ORM: gorm , entgo , sqlc(codegen) - JS Transpiler: gopherjs - GUI: fyne - grpc: grpc - logging: zerolog - test: testify , gomock , dockertest - and many others you can find here

Is this sufficiently better than https://github.com/spf13/viper to warrant a switch?

I'm using https://github.com/spf13/viper for configuration manager.

Ya, I think this issue explains one of the problems: https://github.com/spf13/viper/issues/761

There are some Go packages that can make config easy such as Viper or what I'll do in some of my quick/simple projects is to have a Config struct that I load from a JSON file. You can .gitignore the JSON file, and have your program on first startup write a default JSON file with some sensible default settings (like randomized secret keys for your cookies or JWT tokens and await only your database and email credentials to be filled in).

I'll also add that we set our configuration as structs, and use https://github.com/spf13/viper to load the structure from TOML.

I use https://github.com/go-playground/validator, but honestly, I am not a fan. I just haven’t found anything better.

IDE: use whatever make you productive. I personally use vscode. VCS: git, as golang communities use github heavily as base for many libraries. AFAIK Linter: use staticcheck for linting as it looks like mostly used linting tool in go, supported by many also. In Vscode it will be recommended once you install go plugin. Libraries/Framework: actually the standard libraries already included many things you need, decent enough for your day-to-day development cycles(e.g. `net/http`). But here are things for extra: - Struct fields validator: validator - Http server lib: chi router , httprouter , fasthttp (for non standard http implementations, but fast) - Web Framework: echo , gin , fiber , beego , etc - Http client lib: most already covered by stdlib(net/http), so you rarely need extra lib for this, but if you really need some are: resty - CLI: cobra - Config: godotenv , viper - DB Drivers: sqlx , postgre , sqlite , mysql - nosql: redis , mongodb , elasticsearch - ORM: gorm , entgo , sqlc(codegen) - JS Transpiler: gopherjs - GUI: fyne - grpc: grpc - logging: zerolog - test: testify , gomock , dockertest - and many others you can find here

I work in Go now, it's crazy poor in that regard - let's just mention for instance "zero values" ( so things can remain uninitialized with a default value you can't choose ), recurring questions around "empty vs null vs not set", and everyone using go-playground/validator where you attach rules as comments ( "tags" really, but it's barely the same thing ) that are interpreted at runtime, extremely cumbersome to extend. And all that with an insane amount of boilerplate and footguns. But what really takes the cake: if you dare saying it's extremely weak you'll get shut down by the community. You're supposed to praise it, and indeed, hate python ( you know, that toy language that didn't evolve since 2008 ).

This function requires that I'm using the validator package

You can use a validator engine like go-validator.

In the previous blog, we had gone over struct validations in golang using validator library. Continuing on, in this blog, we'll cover custom validations.

It aims to provide playground-like errors and validator configuration, but with Go code instead of field attributes. The second main goal is much better performance.