Reflection

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Reflection

Overview

• interface values is composed of (value, type)
• Reflection is a type of meta programming
• any interface values can be boxed into reflect.Value and reflect.Type

  Laws of Reflection

  1. Reflection goes from interface value to reflection object.

  2. Reflection goes from reflection object to interface value.

  3. To modify a reflection object, the value must be settable.

  func (v Value) CanSet() bool
  CanSet reports whether the value of v can be changed. A Value can be
  changed only if it is addressable and was not obtained by the use of
  unexported struct fields. If CanSet returns false, calling Value.Set or any
  type-specific setter (e.g., Value.SetBool, Value.SetInt) will panic.

• addressable: need to be pointer variable

Kind

Although there are infinitely many types, there are only a finite number of kinds of type: the basic types Bool, String and all the numbers; the aggregate types Array and Struct, the reference types Chan, Func, Ptr, Slice and Map; interface types; and finally Invalid, meaning no value at all (The zero value of a reflect.Value has kind Invalid).

Reference

• The Go Blog: The Laws of Reflection
• Go (Golang) Reflection Tutorial

[hhow09]

Golang的反射reflect深入理解和示例

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addressable value

• the address operation &x generates a pointer of type *T to x. The operand must be addressable, that is, either a variable, pointer indirection, or slice indexing operation

  not addressable

  &m["key"]     // values in a map
  &afunc()        // return values from function
  &t.method()  // method calls

addressable

v := afunc()
&v