Create Go Backend

Creates a starter project folder for development of Go backends using a single command.

Prerequisites

The following has to be installed prior to running the script:

• Git
• Go
• Bash

Creating the project folder

Clone the repo:

git clone git@github.com:David-The-Programmer/create-go-backend.git 

Run the shell script create a new Go project folder:

./create.sh

You would be prompted for:

1. The path of the new project folder

   Take note that you can use either:

   • A relative path (to your current directory). For example, ./project or ../project.
   • A absolute path. For example, ~/project.

2. The go module path

   Please read the go documentation on specifying the go module path.

3. The go version

   Only the version number needs to be entered, for e.g, 1.17 or 1.21.7.

   All go release versions can be found here.

Using docker (optional)

Once the project is generated, the Dockerfile and compose.yml files can be deleted if usage of docker is not required.

Run the following command to start running the Go backend:

docker compose up --watch

If errors popup while building the Docker image, run the following command after fixing the error to force docker compose to rebuild the Docker image and ignore the cache.

docker compose build

Subsequently run docker compose up --watch to start the container.

The interesting thing is that --watch flag will cause docker compose to watch any changes made to the Go code and rebuild upon change.

This solves the issue of constantly manually rebuilding the code, which is a pain :(

Using VSCode configuration files (optional)

The .vscode folder and the .devcontainer.json file can be deleted if VSCode would not be used as the editor of choice.

Changing the Go version after creation

If the Go version has to be changed after the project folder has been created, take note to change:

1. The .env file. This file contains the GO_VERSION environment variable, which is used by docker compose to know which Go version to use when building the docker image. Only changing the value of the GO_VERSION variable is required, there is no need to export the variable manually, docker compose automatically interpolates the variable value from the .env file.
2. The go.mod file. Run go mod edit -go=<new go version>. This will correct the Go version in the go.mod file.

Subsequently, run docker compose build to force rebuilding of the docker image before running docker compose up --watch.

This is because docker compose up --watch uses the cached image by default, hence the change in Go version would not be reflected.

TODOS

• Initialise Git in project folder?
• Rewrite in Go?
• Automated tests to ensure script creates project folder properly (including docker compose up --watch?)
• Improving folder name and module path prompts to ensure user does not give invalid inputs (e.g, no input, input with only spaces, module name not matching folder name, etc)
  • Warn user of directory override when project folder path already exists
  • Re-prompt user if user does not want to override existing folder in project folder path
• Ensure script stops when there are errors
• Display any actions completed/errors during execution of the script
• Inclusion of git hooks for testing and linting
• Compatibility of Dockerfile and compose.yml with .devcontainer.json (maybe a separate way to make sure vscode uses workspace specific configs, lang version and extensions?)