It looks like you're trying to make a union type (what the ML-family of languages calls "enum"). I know of a couple of patterns for this:
0. Basic error handling (playground)
I suspect what you're doing is just basic error handling. In Go, we use multiple return values and check the result. This is almost certainly what you want to do:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"log"
)
type Data struct {
ID int
Name string
}
type DataError struct {
Message string
ErrorCode string
}
// Implement the `error` interface. `error` is an interface with
// a single `Error() string` method
func (err DataError) Error() string {
return fmt.Sprintf("%s: %s", err.ErrorCode, err.Message)
}
func SomeFunction(returnData bool) (Data, error) {
if returnData {
return Data{ID: 42, Name: "Answer"}, nil
}
return Data{}, DataError{
Message: "A thing happened",
ErrorCode: "Oops!",
}
}
func main() {
// this bool argument controls whether or not an error is returned
data, err := SomeFunction(false)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalln(err)
}
fmt.Println(data)
}
1. Interfaces (playground)
Again, if your options are good-data and error, you should probably use the first case (stick with the idiom/convention), but other times you might have multiple "good data" options. We can use interfaces to solve this problem. Here we're adding a dummy method to tell the compiler to constrain the possible types that can implement this interface to those that have an IsResult() method. The biggest downside to this is that sticking things into an interface can incur an allocation, which can be detrimental in a tight loop. This pattern isn't terribly common.
package main
import "fmt"
type Result interface {
// a dummy method to limit the possible types that can
// satisfy this interface
IsResult()
}
type Data struct {
ID int
Name string
}
func (d Data) IsResult() {}
type DataError struct {
Message string
ErrorCode string
}
func (err DataError) IsResult() {}
func SomeFunction(isGoodData bool) Result {
if isGoodData {
return Data{ID: 42, Name: "answer"}
}
return DataError{Message: "A thing happened", ErrorCode: "Oops!"}
}
func main() {
fmt.Println(SomeFunction(true))
}
2. Tagged Union (playground)
This case is similar to the previous case, except instead of using an interface, we're using a struct with a tag that tells us which type of data the struct contains (this is similar to a tagged union in C, except the size of the struct is the sum of its potential types instead of the size of its largest potential type). While this takes up more space, it can easily be stack-allocated, thus making it tight-loop friendly (I've used this technique to reduce allocs from O(n) to O(1)). In this case, our tag is a bool because we only have two possible types (Data and DataError), but you could also use a C-like enum.
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
type Data struct {
ID int
Name string
}
type DataError struct {
Message string
ErrorCode string
}
type Result struct {
IsGoodData bool
Data Data
Error DataError
}
// Implements the `fmt.Stringer` interface; this is automatically
// detected and invoked by fmt.Println() and friends
func (r Result) String() string {
if r.IsGoodData {
return fmt.Sprint(r.Data)
}
return fmt.Sprint(r.Error)
}
func SomeFunction(isGoodData bool) Result {
if isGoodData {
return Result{
IsGoodData: true,
Data: Data{ID: 42, Name: "Answer"},
}
}
return Result{
IsGoodData: false,
Error: DataError{
Message: "A thing happened",
ErrorCode: "Oops!",
},
}
}
func main() {
// this bool argument controls whether or not an error is returned
fmt.Println(SomeFunction(true))
}
interface{}(play.golang.org/p/h5vPe3Et1O), but that's not an very good solution. In Go you usually use separate error values. Have you gone through any of the introductory materials? – Firelockinterface{}. – Firelock