Go - append to slice in struct

Question

I am trying to implement 2 simple structs as follows:

package main

import (
    \"fmt\"
)

type MyBoxItem struct {
    Name string
}

type MyBox struct {
           


        

Answer 1

Hmm... This is the most common mistake that people make when appending to slices in Go. You must assign the result back to slice.

func (box *MyBox) AddItem(item MyBoxItem) []MyBoxItem {
    box.Items = append(box.Items, item)
    return box.Items
}

Also, you have defined AddItem for *MyBox type, so call this method as box.AddItem(item1)

Answer 2

package main

import (
        "fmt"
)

type MyBoxItem struct {
        Name string
}

type MyBox struct {
        Items []MyBoxItem
}

func (box *MyBox) AddItem(item MyBoxItem) []MyBoxItem {
        box.Items = append(box.Items, item)
        return box.Items
}

func main() {

        item1 := MyBoxItem{Name: "Test Item 1"}

        items := []MyBoxItem{}
        box := MyBox{items}

        box.AddItem(item1)

        fmt.Println(len(box.Items))
}

Playground

---

Output:

1

Answer 3

Though both answers are perfectly fine. There are two more changes that can be done,

1. Getting rid of the return statement as the method is called for a pointer to the struct, so the slice is automatically modified.
2. There is no need to initialise an empty slice and assign it to the struct

    package main    

    import (
        "fmt"
    )

    type MyBoxItem struct {
        Name string
    }

    type MyBox struct {
        Items []MyBoxItem
    }

    func (box *MyBox) AddItem(item MyBoxItem) {
        box.Items = append(box.Items, item)
    }


    func main() {

        item1 := MyBoxItem{Name: "Test Item 1"}
        item2 := MyBoxItem{Name: "Test Item 2"}

        box := MyBox{}

        box.AddItem(item1)
        box.AddItem(item2)

        // checking the output
        fmt.Println(len(box.Items))
        fmt.Println(box.Items)
    }