Optional Parameters in Go?

Go does not have optional parameters nor does it support method overloading:

Method dispatch is simplified if it doesn't need to do type matching as well. Experience with other languages told us that having a variety of methods with the same name but different signatures was occasionally useful but that it could also be confusing and fragile in practice. Matching only by name and requiring consistency in the types was a major simplifying decision in Go's type system.

A nice way to achieve something like optional parameters is to use variadic args. The function actually receives a slice of whatever type you specify.

func foo(params ...int) {
    fmt.Println(len(params))
}

func main() {
    foo()
    foo(1)
    foo(1,2,3)
}

Neither optional parameters nor function overloading are supported in Go. Go does support a variable number of parameters: Passing arguments to ... parameters

No -- neither. Per the Go for C++ programmers docs,

Go does not support function overloading and does not support user defined operators.

I can't find an equally clear statement that optional parameters are unsupported, but they are not supported either.

You can pass arbitrary named parameters with a map. You will have to assert types with "aType = map[key].(*foo.type)" if the parameters have non-uniform types.

type varArgs map[string]interface{}

func myFunc(args varArgs) {

    arg1 := "default"
    if val, ok := args["arg1"]; ok {
        arg1 = val.(string)
    }

    arg2 := 123
    if val, ok := args["arg2"]; ok {
        arg2 = val.(int)
    }

    fmt.Println(arg1, arg2)
}

func Test_test() {
    myFunc(varArgs{"arg1": "value", "arg2": 1234})
}

So I feel like I'm way late to this party but I was searching to see if there was a better way to do this than what I already do. This kinda solves what you were trying to do while also giving the concept of an optional argument.

package main

import "fmt"

type FooOpts struct {
    // optional arguments
    Value string
}

func NewFoo(mandatory string) {
    NewFooWithOpts(mandatory, &FooOpts{})
}

func NewFooWithOpts(mandatory string, opts *FooOpts) {
    if (&opts) != nil {
        fmt.Println("Hello " + opts.Value)
    } else {
        fmt.Println("Hello")
    }
}

func main() {
    NewFoo("make it work please")

    NewFooWithOpts("Make it work please", &FooOpts{Value: " World"})
}

Update 1:

Added a functional example to show functionality versus the sample

Go doesn’t support optional parameters , default values and function overloading but you can use some tricks to implement the same.

Sharing one example where you can have different number and type of arguments in one function. It’s a plain code for easy understanding you need to add error handling and some logic.

func student(StudentDetails ...interface{}) (name string, age int, area string) {
    age = 10 //Here Age and area are optional params set to default values
    area = "HillView Singapore"

    for index, val := range StudentDetails {
        switch index {
            case 0: //the first mandatory param
                name, _ = val.(string)
            case 1: // age is optional param
                age, _ = val.(int)
            case 2: //area is optional param
                area, _ = val.(string)
        }
    }
    return
}

func main() {
    fmt.Println(student("Aayansh"))
    fmt.Println(student("Aayansh", 11))
    fmt.Println(student("Aayansh", 15, "Bukit Gombak, Singapore"))
}

Go language does not support method overloading, but you can use variadic args just like optional parameters, also you can use interface{} as parameter but it is not a good choice.

You could use pointers and leave them nil if you don't want to use them:

func getPosts(limit *int) {
  if optParam != nil {
    // fetch posts with limit 
  } else {
    // fetch all posts
  }
}

func main() {
  // get Posts, limit by 2
  limit := 2
  getPosts(&limit)

  // get all posts
  getPosts(nil)
}

Another possibility would be to use a struct which with a field to indicate whether its valid. The null types from sql such as NullString are convenient. Its nice to not have to define your own type, but in case you need a custom data type you can always follow the same pattern. I think the optional-ness is clear from the function definition and there is minimal extra code or effort.

As an example:

func Foo(bar string, baz sql.NullString){
  if !baz.Valid {
        baz.String = "defaultValue"
  }
  // the rest of the implementation
}