How to parse an inner field in a nested JSON object

Question

I have a JSON object similar to this one:

{
  \"name\": \"Cain\",
  \"parents\": {
    \"mother\" : \"Eve\",
    \"father\" : \"Adam\"
  }
}

No

Answer 1

Unfortunately, unlike encoding/xml, the json package doesn't provide a way to access nested values. You'll want to either create a separate Parents struct or assign the type to be map[string]string. For example:

type Person struct {
    Name string
    Parents map[string]string
}

You could then provide a getter for mother as so:

func (p *Person) Mother() string {
    return p.Parents["mother"]
}

This may or may not play into your current codebase and if refactoring the Mother field to a method call is not on the menu, then you may want to create a separate method for decoding and conforming to your current struct.