How to find the type of an object in Go?

Question

How do I find the type of an object in Go? In Python, I just use typeof to fetch the type of object. Similarly in Go, is there a way to implement the same ?

Answer 1

You can use: interface{}..(type) as in this playground

package main
import "fmt"
func main(){
    types := []interface{} {"a",6,6.0,true}
    for _,v := range types{
        fmt.Printf("%T\n",v)
        switch v.(type) {
        case int:
           fmt.Printf("Twice %v is %v\n", v, v.(int) * 2)
        case string:
           fmt.Printf("%q is %v bytes long\n", v, len(v.(string)))
       default:
          fmt.Printf("I don't know about type %T!\n", v)
      }
    }
}

Answer 2

you can use reflect.TypeOf.

• basic type(e.g.: int, string): it will return its name (e.g.: int, string)
• struct: it will return something in the format <package name>.<struct name> (e.g.: main.test)

Answer 3

To get a string representation:

From http://golang.org/pkg/fmt/

%T a Go-syntax representation of the type of the value

package main
import "fmt"
func main(){
    types := []interface{} {"a",6,6.0,true}
    for _,v := range types{
        fmt.Printf("%T\n",v)
    }
}

Outputs:

string
int
float64
bool

Answer 4

I found 3 ways to return a variable's type at runtime:

Using string formatting

func typeof(v interface{}) string {
    return fmt.Sprintf("%T", v)
}

Using reflect package

func typeof(v interface{}) string {
    return reflect.TypeOf(v).String()
}

Using type assertions

func typeof(v interface{}) string {
    switch v.(type) {
    case int:
        return "int"
    case float64:
        return "float64"
    //... etc
    default:
        return "unknown"
    }
}

Every method has a different best use case:

• string formatting - short and low footprint (not necessary to import reflect package)

• reflect package - when need more details about the type we have access to the full reflection capabilities

• type assertions - allows grouping types, for example recognize all int32, int64, uint32, uint64 types as "int"

Answer 5

reflect package comes to rescue:

reflect.TypeOf(obj).String()

Check this demo

Answer 6

Best way is using reflection concept in Google.
reflect.TypeOf gives type along with the package name
reflect.TypeOf().Kind() gives underlining type