Good job on completing the module on struct in Go! You now have a strong understanding of how to create and use structs. Let’s review everything we went over.

A group of related variables can be defined as a struct. Each variable within a struct is known as a field.

A struct must be defined before it can be used in a program. The definition of a struct includes its name and its fields.

type Point struct{
  x int
  y int
}

An instance of a defined struct can be created by providing its name followed by a set of curly braces with optional values.

p1 := Point{x: 10, y: 12}

Fields within a struct can be accessed or modified using the . operator.

p1 := Point{x:10, y:12}
fmt.Println(p1.x)

Methods can be associated with a struct by naming a struct parameter in parentheses before the function name.

func (rectangle Rectangle) area()  float32{
  return rectangle.length * rectangle.height
}

func main() {
  rect.area()
}

The values of a struct can only be modified in a function if the struct is passed as a pointer.

func (rectangle *Rectangle) modify(newLength float32){
  rectangle.length = newLength
}

Accessing the fields of a pointer to a struct does not require dereferencing. The fields of the struct pointer can be accessed using the normal . syntax.

steve := Employee{“Steve”, “Stevens”, 34, “Junior Manager”}
pointerToSteve := &steve
fmt.Println(pointerToSteve.firstName)

Arrays can be used to store many of the same struct’s instances.

points := []Point{{1, 1}, {7, 27}, {12, 7}, {9, 25}}

A struct can contain fields that are themselves other structs.

type Name struct{
  firstName string
  lastName string
}

type Employee struct{
  name Name
  age int
  title string
}

Congratulations on finishing the lesson. Now that you understand structs, you can use them to define custom collections of variables in your programs!