AWS SDK for Go 2.0 Developer Preview

We're pleased to announce the Developer Preview release of the AWS SDK for Go 2.0. Many aspects of the SDK have been refactored based on your feedback, with a strong focus on performance, consistency, discoverability, and ease of use. The Developer Preview is here for you to provide feedback, and influence the direction of the AWS SDK for Go 2.0 before its production-ready, general availability launch. Tell us what you like, and what you don't like. Your feedback matters to us. Find details at the bottom of this post on how to give feedback and contribute.

You can safely use the AWS SDK for Go 2.0 in parallel with the 1.x SDK, with both SDKs coexisting in the same Go application. We won’t drop support for the 1.0 SDK any time soon. We know there are a lot of customers depending on the 1.x SDK, and we will continue to support them. As we get closer to general availability for 2.0, we'll share a more detailed plan about how we'll support the 1.x SDK.

What has changed?

Our focus for the 2.0 SDK is to improve the SDK’s development experience and performance, make the SDK easy to extend, and add new features. The changes made in the Developer Preview target the major pain points of configuring the SDK and using AWS service API calls. Check out the SDK for details on pending changes that are in development and designs we’re discussing.

The following are some of the larger changes included in the AWS SDK for Go 2.0 Developer Preview.

SDK configuration

The 2.0 SDK simplifies how you configure the SDK's service clients by using a single Config type. This simplifies the Session and Config type interaction from the 1.x SDK. In addition, we’ve moved the service-specific configuration flags to the individual service client types. This reduces confusion about where service clients will use configuration members.

We added the external package to provide the utilities for you to use external configuration sources to populate the SDK's Config type. External sources include environmental variables, shared credentials file (~/.aws/credentials), and shared config file (~/.aws/config). By default, the 2.0 SDK will now automatically load configuration values from the shared config file. The external package also provides you with the tools to customize how the external sources are loaded and used to populate the Config type.

You can even customize external configuration sources to include your own custom sources, for example, JSON files or a custom file format.

Use LoadDefaultAWSConfig in the external package to create the default Config value, and load configuration values from the external configuration sources.

cfg, err := external.LoadDefaultAWSConfig()

To specify the shared configuration profile load used in code, use the WithSharedConfigProfile helper passed into LoadDefaultAWSConfig with the profile name to use.

cfg, err := external.LoadDefaultAWSConfig(
	external.WithSharedConfigProfile("gopher")
)

Once a Config value is returned by LoadDefaultAWSConfig, you can set or override configuration values by setting the fields on the Config struct, such as Region.

cfg.Region = endpoints.UsWest2RegionID

Use the cfg value to provide the loaded configuration to new AWS service clients.

svc := dynamodb.New(cfg)

API request methods

The 2.0 SDK consolidates several ways to make an API call, providing a single request constructor for each API call. This means that your application will create an API request from input parameters, then send it. This enables you to optionally modify and configure how the request will be sent. This includes, but isn’t limited to, modifications such as setting the Context per request, adding request handlers, and enabling logging.

Each API request method is suffixed with Request and returns a typed value for the specific API request.

As an example, to use the Amazon Simple Storage Service GetObject API, the signature of the method is:

func (c *S3) GetObjectRequest(*s3.GetObjectInput) *s3.GetObjectRequest

To use the GetObject API, we pass in the input parameters to the method, just like we would with the 1.x SDK. The 2.0 SDK's method will initialize a GetObjectRequest value that we can then use to send our request to Amazon S3.

req := svc.GetObjectRequest(params)

// Optionally, set the context or other configuration for the request to use
req.SetContext(ctx)

// Send the request and get the response
resp, err := req.Send()

API enumerations

The 2.0 SDK uses typed enumeration values for all API enumeration fields. This change provides you with the type safety that you and your IDE can leverage to discover which enumeration values are valid for particular fields. Typed enumeration values also provide a stronger type safety story for your application than using string literals directly. The 2.0 SDK uses string aliases for each enumeration type. The SDK also generates typed constants for each enumeration value. This change removes the need for enumeration API fields to be pointers, as a zero-value enumeration always means the field isn’t set.

For example, the Amazon Simple Storage Service PutObject API has a field, ACL ObjectCannedACL. An ObjectCannedACL string alias is defined within the s3 package, and each enumeration value is also defined as a typed constant. In this example, we want to use the typed enumeration values to set an uploaded object to have an ACL of public-read. The constant that the SDK provides for this enumeration value is ObjectCannedACLPublicRead.

svc.PutObjectRequest(&s3.PutObjectInput{
	Bucket: aws.String("myBucket"),
	Key:    aws.String("myKey"),
	ACL:    s3.ObjectCannedACLPublicRead,
	Body:   body,
})

API slice and map elements

The 2.0 SDK removes the need to convert slice and map elements from values to pointers for API calls. This will reduce the overhead of needing to use fields with a type, such as []string, in API calls. The 1.x SDK's pattern of using pointer types for all slice and map elements was a significant pain point for users, requiring them to convert between the types. The 2.0 SDK does away with the pointer types for slices and maps, using value types instead.

The following example shows how value types for the Amazon Simple Queue Service AddPermission API's AWSAccountIds and Actions member slices are set.

svc := sqs.New(cfg)

svc.AddPermission(&sqs.AddPermissionInput{
	AWSAcountIds: []string{
		"123456789",
	},
	Actions: []string{
		"SendMessage",
	},

	Label:    aws.String("MessageSender"),
	QueueUrl: aws.String(queueURL)
})