Nested structs on GAE datastore using Go

Question

I\'m trying to figure out how to get nested structs to work with GAE datastore using Go. I know the datastore doesn\'t specifically support nested structs. I need to find a

Answer 1

Go's appengine datastore api provides the PropertyLoadSaver interface for this sort of thing: https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/go/datastore/reference#PropertyLoadSaver

You structure your struct however you want and then implement the Load and Save methods of that interface to populate it correctly. It means you write the serialization code yourself but it gives you full freedom in how you structure your data.

This will allow you still filter over the fields and have a nested struct.

Answer 2

The python runtime has the ndb library which supports nested structures like this. Go does not, so I can think of two solutions:

1. In the POST kind, have a user field that is a key, referencing a USER kind with the necessary fields. Requires two fetches and roundtrips.
2. Make a user field in the POST kind that is a blob. The blob is a string that is [de]serialized in go. This means you can't search or filter on any of the user data, but it also allows you to store everything in one entity.

You should use these based on the needs of your app. If you need users to be a real thing, use 1. If users aren't objects you need to work with (i.e., just data to display), you can use 2.