如何不在Go中将空结构编组为JSON？

Question

I have a struct like this:

type Result struct {
    Data       MyStruct  `json:"data,omitempty"`
    Status     string    `json:"status,omitempty"`
    Reason     string    `json:"reason,omitempty"`
}

But even if the instance of MyStruct is entirely empty (meaning, all values are default), it's being serialized as:

"data":{}

I know that the encoding/json docs specify that "empty" fields are:

false, 0, any nil pointer or interface value, and any array, slice, map, or string of length zero

but with no consideration for a struct with all empty/default values. All of its fields are also tagged with omitempty, but this has no effect.

How can I get the JSON package to not marshal my field that is an empty struct?

Answer 1

Oh! Easy fix: "any nil pointer." -- make the struct a pointer.

Fix:

type Result struct {
    Data       *MyStruct `json:"data,omitempty"`
    Status     string    `json:"status,omitempty"`
    Reason     string    `json:"reason,omitempty"`
}

Notice the *MyStruct -- when I create a MyStruct now, I simply do so by reference:

myStruct := &MyStruct{ /* values */ }

And now the "empty" MyStruct is no longer marshaled into JSON as desired.