proposal: add MarshalText/UnmarshalText to time.Duration

[bystones]

Adding these methods to time.Duration would make it easier to write and read JSON data containing time.Duration objects. In Go 1.7 it will be possible to use maps in which the keys implement the two methods for marshalling and unmarshalling JSON.

Like time.Time the amount of code added should be minimal, as time.ParseDuration and time.Duration.String are already in place.

Some projects already wrap the time.Duration type to get this behavior:

• InfluxDB: https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb/blob/master/toml/toml.go
• Prometheus: https://github.com/prometheus/alertmanager/blob/master/config/notifiers.go#L309

[Shelnutt2]

I've implemented the marshal/unmarshal support via https://golang.org/cl/24473.

[gopherbot]

CL https://golang.org/cl/24473 mentions this issue.

[bradfitz]

Sorry, I think we're going to reject this on the grounds that the JSON spec does not define a way to stringify time durations. It also adds too much complexity and awareness of JSON to the low-level time package.