i have the following struct, and need some of the fields to be nulluble so i use pointers, mainly to handle sql nulls
type Chicken struct{
Id int //Not nullable
Name *string //can be null
AvgMonthlyEggs *float32 //can be null
BirthDate *time.Time //can be null
}
so when i do the following i can see that the json result can have nulls for value types which is what i want
stringValue:="xx"
chicken := &Chicken{1,&stringValue,nil,nil}
chickenJson,_ := json.Marshal(&chicken)
fmt.Println(string(chickenJson))
but when i try to do it all using reflection
var chickenPtr *Chicken
itemTyp := reflect.TypeOf(chickenPtr).Elem()
item := reflect.New(itemTyp)
item.Elem().FieldByName("Id").SetInt(1)
//the problem is here not sure how to set the pointer to the field
item.Elem().FieldByName("Name").Set(&stringValue) //Error caused by this line
itemJson,_ := json.Marshal(item.Interface())
fmt.Println(string(itemJson))
what i get from the reflection part is the following error
cannot use &stringValue (type *string) as type reflect.Value in argument to item.Elem().FieldByName("Name").Set
what am i doing wrong?
here is a GoPlay http://play.golang.org/p/0xt45uHoUn