Unmarshaling JSON top level array into map of string to string

I'm trying to unmarshal a JSON array of the following type:

[
{"abc's": "n;05881364"},
{"abcoulomb": "n;13658345"},
{"abcs": "n;05881364"}
]

into a map[string]string. This question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25465566/golang-parse-json-array-into-data-structure almost answered my problem, but mine is a truly map, not an array of maps. Unmarshaling into a []map[string]string worked but I now get a map of map[string]string, not a simple map of string as it should be

There is no way to do it directly with the json package; you have to do the conversion yourself. This is simple:

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
)

func main() {
	data := []byte(`
        [
        {"abc's": "n;05881364"},
        {"abcoulomb": "n;13658345"},
        {"abcs": "n;05881364"}
        ]
    `)

	var mapSlice []map[string]string
	if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &mapSlice); err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	resultingMap := map[string]string{}
	for _, m := range mapSlice {
		for k, v := range m {
			resultingMap[k] = v
		}
	}
	fmt.Println(resultingMap)
}

Output

map[abc's:n;05881364 abcoulomb:n;13658345 abcs:n;05881364]

An alternative (though very similar) to Alex's answer is to define your own type along with an UnmarshalJSON function.

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
)

type myMapping map[string]string

func (mm myMapping) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) error {
	var temp []map[string]string
	if err := json.Unmarshal(b, &temp); err != nil {
		return err
	}
	for _, m := range temp {
		for k, v := range m {
			mm[k] = v
		}
	}
	return nil
}

func main() {
	data := []byte(`
        	[
        		{"abc's": "n;05881364"},
        		{"abcoulomb": "n;13658345"},
        		{"abcs": "n;05881364"}
        	]`)

	resultingMap := myMapping{}
	if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &resultingMap); err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	fmt.Println(resultingMap)
}

Playground