The Dial function of the net package in Golang connects to a server address on a named network.
To use the Dial function, you will need to import the net package into your program, as shown below:
import (
"net"
)
The syntax of the Dial function is shown below:
Dial(network, address string) (Conn, error)
The Dial function accepts the following parameters:
network: The named network for communication, e.g., TCP, UDP, IP, etc.
address: A string that identifies the address of the server to communicate to.
The list of supported networks and rules for their corresponding hosts can be found here.
The Dial function returns a Conn object that represents a network connection and an error object.
If the Dial function successfully establishes the connection, the error object has a value of nil.
The code below shows how the Dial function works in Golang.
package main// import necessary packagesimport ("net""fmt")func main(){// initialize the address of the serveraddress := "golang.org:http"// open connection to serverconn, err := net.Dial("tcp", address)// check if connection was successfully establishedif err != nil {fmt.Println("The following error occured", err)} else {fmt.Println("The connection was established to", conn)}}
In the code above:
net and fmt packages.golang.org:http.Dial function to connect to the server through the provided address over a tcp network.err will be nil, and the corresponding message will be output. Otherwise, the if statement in line 18 will detect the error and print the relevant message if an error occurs.