I'm getting the following output when running https://golangci-lint.run/:
rangeValCopy: each iteration copies 128 bytes (consider pointers or indexing) (gocritic)
for _, v := range products {
Here is a cut down version of the code I am running:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"encoding/json"
)
type Application struct {
ProductData []ProductDatum
}
type ProductDatum struct {
Name string
ProductBrand string
ProductType string
}
type Item struct {
ProductBrand string
ProductName string
ProductType string
}
func main() {
appl := Application{
ProductData: []ProductDatum{
{
Name: "Baz",
ProductBrand: "Foo",
ProductType: "Bar",
},
},
}
products := appl.ProductData
var orderLinesItem []Item
for _, v := range products {
item := []Item{
{
ProductBrand: v.ProductBrand,
ProductName: v.Name,
ProductType: v.ProductType,
},
}
orderLinesItem = append(orderLinesItem, item...)
}
body, _ := json.Marshal(orderLinesItem)
fmt.Println(string(body))
}
Here it is in go playground.
What does this output mean and how can I do what it's asking? I tried to use a pointer on each item but that didn't seem to make a difference.
What the linter is trying to tell you is that, by using range the way you are using it, each time you get a new element v
it is not returning an element directly from the collection, rather it's a new copy of that element. The linter suggest two approaches:
Either change the slice to be a slice of pointers to struct, that way each iteration of the for loop will get a reference to an element instead of a full struct copy
var products []*ProductDatum
//fill products slice
var orderLinesItem []Item
for _, v := range products{
//here v is a pointer instead of a full copy of a struct.
//Go dereferences the pointer automatically therefore you don't have to use *v
item := []Item{
{
ProductBrand: v.ProductBrand,
ProductName: v.Name,
ProductType: v.ProductType,
},
}
}
The other suggestion from the linter is using the index value that the range returns on each iteration
for i := range products{
item := []Item{
{
//access elements by index directly
ProductBrand: products[i].ProductBrand,
ProductName: products[i].Name,
ProductType: products[i].ProductType,
},
}
}