Question

Is there a way to access the name of a “Child” struct from methods on the “Parent” struct when using anonymous method embedding.

For Example:

type Animal struct{}

func (a Animal) SayName() string {
    v := reflect.TypeOf(a)
    return v.Name()
}

type Zebra struct {
    Animal
}

var zebra Zebra
zebraName := zebra.SayName() // "Animal" want "Zebra"

The SayName() method returns the type.Name() of the “Parent”.

I realize I could do something like this, but since this for an API and will be reused often. I would prefer to have a solution that is less repetitive.

type Animal struct{
  Name string
}

func (a Animal) SayName() string {
    return a.Name
}

type Zebra struct {
    Animal
}

zebra := &Zebra{Name:"Zebra"}
zebraName := zebra.SayName() // "Zebra"

Any ideas on how this could be accomplished? Is this possible in Go?

Thank you.

Answer 1

An Animal type doesn’t know anything about types which may include them as members, so an Animal method can’t give you this answer based on the receiver alone. But must this information come from a Zebra method?

func SayName(a interface{}) string {
    return reflect.TypeOf(a).Name()
}

works for any type, Zebras included.