Question

If you want rendering JSON and HTML to be even simpler, there is the github.com/unrolled/render package. This package was inspired by the martini-contrib/render package and is my goto when it comes to rendering data for presentation in my web applications.

package main

import (
  "net/http"

  "gopkg.in/unrolled/render.v1"
)

func main() {
  r := render.New(render.Options{})
  mux := http.NewServeMux()

  mux.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
    w.Write([]byte("Welcome, visit sub pages now."))
  })

  mux.HandleFunc("/data", func(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
    r.Data(w, http.StatusOK, []byte("Some binary data here."))
  })

  mux.HandleFunc("/json", func(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
    r.JSON(w, http.StatusOK, map[string]string{"hello": "json"})
  })

  mux.HandleFunc("/html", func(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
    // Assumes you have a template in ./templates called "example.tmpl"
    // $ mkdir -p templates && echo "<h1>Hello {{.}}.</h1>" > templates/example.tmpl
    r.HTML(w, http.StatusOK, "example", nil)
  })

  http.ListenAndServe(":8080", mux)
}

Exercises

1. Have fun playing with all of the options available when calling render.New()
2. Try using the .yield helper function (with the curly braces) and a layout with HTML templates.