Pulling a file from a remote go package

I have a small dataset (yaml/json/txt whichever is not important) that periodically gets updated (gets bigger) in a go package at:

github.com/abc-company/repoA/package-with-data/data.yml. Currently, I am working on a service that uses this file specifically in a different repo, say:

github.com/abc-company/repoB/functions.go. The functions.go file has many functions and one of them will use the data.yml and I am stuck on how to import this. The usual import github.com/abc-company/repoA/package-with-data and then go mod vendor does not give access to this file - it only seems to give access to functions and methods etc, which is probably what is intended. It also does not help I am a complete beginner to go and github stuff in general.

The file itself is tiny and only holds a few dozen fields which gets periodically updated from different service altogether, so just copying and pasting this file to my working repo is an ugly solution. What is the easiest to handle this situation ? I did my googling but it's all about importing Go package stuff that shows up and the top few results are not applicable to my situation.

Go does not provide a way to package non-go code files (though it does now have an official work-around comparable to other solutions… see below).

There are at least two possible solutions/work-arounds which you might find useful in your particular context.

1. If the data is as small as you suggest, then simply embedding the file content as a const declaration in a go file might work. As a go source file, it will be included in the package and instead of loading from a file, simply use the contents of the declared const.

2. A step up from hard-coding the file content in your source yourself would be to keep the content in a separate file but use some external tool to create an in-code representation as and when required. This allows you to use tooling to ensure your external files are valid (e.g. syntax checking yaml editors/plugins etc).

For the 2nd approach, there is “official” support for just such a mechanism via the embed package (since Go 1.16).

Alternatively go-bindata is a very simple tool that I've used very successfully.

As well as converting file content to code, it provides an Asset() function to "load the content"; your code continues to look like it is loading from a file and go-bindata has mechanisms to allow you to actually load from a file under certain circumstances, if that is part of your use case (see the very good go-bindata docs for details).

You should be aware of some history relating to the provenance of the go-bindata project. The article provides the rather hysterical headline that there is no “guarantee of good intentions” with the (now) maintainer of that project, although one might argue that trying to keep the project alive is evidence of such good intentions. However, there was also no such guarantee regarding the original author (or for that matter of just about any OSS project). Crucially there appears to be no evidence of bad intentions in this case. As always, exercise due care and diligence.

If embed is too clunky/limited for your needs and the history of go-bindata makes you nervous, alternatives that achieve much the same thing but in different ways include:

• packr
• statik

I have not used either of these myself (or embed) so cannot say whether they are better than go-bindata, but you might want to check them out.