How to set and get fields in struct's method

nope picture nope · Aug 4, 2012 · Viewed 88.4k times · Source

After creating a struct like this:

type Foo struct {
    name string
}

func (f Foo) SetName(name string) {
    f.name = name
}

func (f Foo) GetName() string {
    return f.name
}

How do I create a new instance of Foo and set and get the name? I tried the following:

p := new(Foo)
p.SetName("Abc")
name := p.GetName()

fmt.Println(name)

Nothing gets printed, because name is empty. So how do I set and get a field inside a struct?

Working playground

Answer

Moshe Revah picture Moshe Revah · Aug 4, 2012

Commentary (and working) example:

package main

import "fmt"

type Foo struct {
    name string
}

// SetName receives a pointer to Foo so it can modify it.
func (f *Foo) SetName(name string) {
    f.name = name
}

// Name receives a copy of Foo since it doesn't need to modify it.
func (f Foo) Name() string {
    return f.name
}

func main() {
    // Notice the Foo{}. The new(Foo) was just a syntactic sugar for &Foo{}
    // and we don't need a pointer to the Foo, so I replaced it.
    // Not relevant to the problem, though.
    p := Foo{}
    p.SetName("Abc")
    name := p.Name()
    fmt.Println(name)
}

Test it and take A Tour of Go to learn more about methods and pointers, and the basics of Go at all.