README.md

gorilla/mux

go get

Go is a simple language by design, and the design of net/http reflects that. Sometimes we'd like easier support for routing and other tasks. For this we can install a third-party package.

We're going to use gorilla/mux to simplify out routing.

To install third-party package we'll be using go get. Run the following command in a terminal/command prompt:

go get github.com/gorilla/mux

This will fetch (using git) and install the gorilla/mux package under your current $GOPATH. You can start importing the package in your code now.

If the Go code finds out that a package you install depends on other packages - it will install these dependencies as well. There are several external tools for managing dependencies and dep is emerging as the official one - but it's still in beta.

mux

A mux (multiplexer) is a router that routes HTTP paths to handler. You can use regular expression in paths and also give names to parts of the path. Let's see an example.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"net/http"

	"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)

func hiHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	vars := mux.Vars(r)
	name := vars["name"]

	fmt.Fprintf(w, "Hello %s\n", name)
}

func main() {
	rtr := mux.NewRouter()
	rtr.HandleFunc("/hi/{name}", hiHandler)
	http.ListenAndServe(":8080", rtr)
}

If we run this

go run mux.go

And the hit the API

curl http://localhost:8080/hi/There

we'll get back "Hello There"

gorilla/mux also allows you to define the HTTP methods/verbs (GET, POST ...) that are allowed to each handler.

Exercise

Use gorilla/mux in our sever to figure out the key name and split dbHandler to a getHandler (GET request) and setHandler (POST request).

Solution