Welcome to the Protogetter project!
Protogetter is a linter developed specifically for Go programmers working with nested protobuf
types.
It's designed to aid developers in preventing invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
errors arising from direct access of nested protobuf
fields.
When working with protobuf
, it's quite common to have complex structures where a message field is contained within another message, which itself can be part of another message, and so on.
If these fields are accessed directly and some field in the call chain will not be initialized, it can result in application panic.
Protogetter addresses this issue by suggesting use of getter methods for field access.
Protogetter analyzes your Go code and helps detect direct protobuf
field accesses that could give rise to panic.
The linter suggests using getters:
m.GetFoo().GetBar().GetBaz()
instead of direct field access:
m.Foo.Bar.Baz
And you will then only need to perform a nil check after the final call:
if m.GetFoo().GetBar().GetBaz() != nil {
// Do something with m.GetFoo().GetBar().GetBaz()
}
instead of:
if m.Foo != nil {
if m.Foo.Bar != nil {
if m.Foo.Bar.Baz != nil {
// Do something with m.Foo.Bar.Baz
}
}
}
or use zero values:
// If one of the methods returns `nil` we will receive 0 instead of panic.
v := m.GetFoo().GetBar().GetBaz().GetInt()
instead of panic:
// If at least one structure in the chains is not initialized, we will get a panic.
v := m.Foo.Bar.Baz.Int
which simplifies the code and makes it more reliable.
go install github.com/ghostiam/protogetter/cmd/protogetter@latest
To run the linter:
protogetter ./...
Or to apply suggested fixes directly:
protogetter --fix ./...