Go: embed static files in binary

This might be a very amateur question. I'm trying to embed static files into binary, ie. html. How do I do that with https://github.com/jteeuwen/go-bindata?

So I can access an asset with this https://github.com/jteeuwen/go-bindata#accessing-an-asset, but what do I do with "data", and how to do I parse files, execute template, and serve them in the directory?

I couldn't find any examples online, and will appreciate some help!

5/6 years later, this should be easier with Go 1.16 (Q1 2021), which adds support for embedded files (issue/proposal 41191 )

> It will be permitted to use //go:embed naming a single file to initialize a plain string or []byte variable:

//go:embed gopher.png
var gopherPNG []byte

The import is required to flag the file as containing //go:embed lines and needing processing.
Goimports (and gopls etc) can be taught this rule and automatically add the import in any file with a //go:embed as needed.

That sparked a debate on issue 42328 about how to avoid surprising inclusion of "hidden" files when using //go:embed

This as resolved in CL 275092 and commit 37588ff

> Decision to exclude files matching .* and _* from embedded directory results when embedding an entire directory tree.

See src/embed/internal/embedtest/embed_test.go

	//go:embed testdata/k*.txt
	var local embed.FS
	testFiles(t, local, "testdata/ken.txt", "If a program is too slow, it must have a loop.\n")

	//go:embed testdata/k*.txt
	var s string
	testString(t, s, "local variable s", "If a program is too slow, it must have a loop.\n")

	//go:embed testdata/h*.txt
	var b []byte
	testString(t, string(b), "local variable b", "hello, world\n")

Note: with CL 281492, cmd/go passes embedcfg to gccgo if supported.

See also (Jan. 2021) issue 43854 "opt-in for //go:embed to not ignore files and empty dirs".

Given a directory structure like so:

example/
    main.go
    data/hi.html

example/main.go

package main

import (
    "html/template"
    "log"
    "net/http"
    "os"
)

var tmpl *template.Template

func init() {
    data, err := Asset("data/hi.html")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    tmpl = template.Must(template.New("tmpl").Parse(string(data)))
}

func main() {
    // print to stdout
    tmpl.Execute(os.Stdout, map[string]string{"Name": "James"})

    http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
        tmpl.Execute(w, map[string]string{"Name": "James"})
    })

    log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil))
}

example/data/hi.html

<h1>Hi, {{.Name}}</h1>

run like so:

go-bindata data && go build && ./example

Console Output:

<h1>Hi, James</h1>

HTTP output:

<h1>Hi, James</h1>