The http package in GoLang allows HTTP functions to be carried out in GoLang scripts.
To use HTTP commands in GO, the net/http package needs to be imported. The following example shows how to get a website using GO:
package mainimport "fmt"import "net/http"func main() {resp, err := http.Get("http://educative.io")if err == nil {fmt.Println(resp.Status)defer resp.Body.Close()} else {panic(err)}resp, err = http.Get("http://invalidurl.com")if err == nil {fmt.Println(resp.Status)defer resp.Body.Close()} else {panic(err)}}
The Get() function attempts to get the specified webpage through an HTTP connection. The first website is successfully received and a 200 OK status is displayed as an indication. However, when an invalid URL is attempted, the error message 404 Not Found is displayed. As a good practice, the response body, which contains the HTML of the requested website, should be closed before the program is exited.
A more useful application of this HTTP client would be as an HTTP server. The following example displays a very simplified server.
func educative (w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request){fmt.Fprintf(w, "Response")}func main() {http.HandleFunc("/educative", educative)http.ListenAndServe(":9090", nil)}
This code sets up a server at port 9090 using the ListenAndServe() function. The HandleFunc() function sets the educative() function to handle all HTTP requests with /educative in the URL. All handler functions need to have an http.ResponseWriter and *http.Request in their arguments. The Response Writer can then be used, as it has been here, to send a response. The handler function here simply sends the word “Response” as a reply. In real servers, one would expect some real data, some HTML, or other files to be returned as a response.
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