gotype-conversiontype-alias

Converting private, dynamic type from interface{}


I'm trying to test around an SQL query wherein one of the arguments is a gosnowflake.Array (essentially a wrapper to a slice) using the go-sqlmock package. Normally, something like this requires me to create a value converter, which I have included:

func (opt arrayConverterOption[T]) ConvertValue(v any) (driver.Value, error) {
    casted, ok := v.(*[]T)
    if ok {
        Expect(*casted).Should(HaveLen(len(opt.Expected)))
        for i, c := range *casted {
            Expect(c).Should(Equal(opt.Expected[i]))
        }
    } else {
        fmt.Printf("Type: %T\n", v)
        return v, nil
    }

    return "TEST_RESULT", nil
}

Now, this function is called for every argument submitted to the query. I use it to test the correctness of the values in the slice or pass the argument through if it isn't one. The problem I'm having is that, when I create a arrayConverterOption[string] and give it a gosnowflake.Array(["A", "B", "C"]) as an argument, the type assertion fails because gosnowflake.Array returns an internal dynamic type, *stringArray, which is defined as a *[]string.

So you can see my dilemma here. On the one hand, I can't convert v because it's an interface{} and I can't alias v because the inner type is not *[]string, but *stringArray. So then, what should I do here?


Solution

  • I didn't find a way to do this without resulting to reflection. However, with reflction I did manage it:

    var casted []T
    var ok bool
    
    value := reflect.ValueOf(v)
    if value.Kind() == reflect.Pointer {
        if inner := value.Elem(); inner.Kind() == reflect.Slice {
            r := inner.Convert(reflect.TypeOf([]T{})).Interface()
            casted, ok = r.([]T)
        }
    }
    

    So, this code checks specifically for anything that is a pointer to a slice, which my dynamic type is. Then it uses reflection to convert the inner object to the slice type I was expecting. After that, I call Interface() on the result to get the interface{} from the reflected value and then cast it to a []T. This succeeds. If it doesn't then I'm not working with one of those dynamically typed slices and I can handle the type normally.