reflect: call of reflect.Value.FieldByName on ptr Value

Question

I have a data structure like this demo.

type Family struct {
   first string
   last string
}
type Person struct {
   name string
   family *Family
}

func main(         


        

Answer 1

As you've noted, family is *Family. And as the error says, you cannot call .FieldByName(...) on a reflect.Value where that value is a pointer.

Instead you need to indirect the pointer, to get the value that it points to, and call .FieldByName(...) on that.

familyPtr := v.FieldByName("family")
v = reflect.Indirect(familyPtr).FieldByName("last")

See docs on indirect: https://golang.org/pkg/reflect/#Indirect