net/http: make Request.Form.Get call ParseForm automatically

[Trion129]

req.ParseForm() is needed to be called before accessing the form parameters using param := req.Form.Get("param-name") where req is a http.Request

Is there a reason behind this?
I would like to add a feature to ParseForm automatically from Form.Get() on first execution and on next calls, check if Form is already parsed and work as usual.
What are your thoughts?

[mvdan]

How exactly would this work? r.Form is of type url.Values, so it can't possibly make a call back to http.Request - that would mean an import cycle.

[pciet]

This functionality is already implemented in one way as r.FormValue but the parse error is ignored and multiple values for a key isn't handled (POST/PUT body parameters take precedence over URL query values, and the first value is picked).

// Go 2 improvement?
func (r *Request) FormValue(key string) ([]string, error)

Go 2 net/http improvements: #5465

[Trion129]

Ah, I didn't know about r.FormValue 😋 That is indeed what I need! Most of form tutorials were using Parse and then Form.Get, so I thought maybe it doesn't exist.
What about an alias GetFormValue? because first time I tried to find the function in my IDE, I typed req.Get in hopes something like this will show up.

[mvdan]

Go2 changes are already being tracked in another issue, so I'm going to close this one.

Exposing the same method under two names is a bad idea in my opinion; especially since Go tends to not like getters: https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#Getters