How to find the type of an object in Go?

Use the reflect package:

Package reflect implements run-time reflection, allowing a program to manipulate objects with arbitrary types. The typical use is to take a value with static type interface{} and extract its dynamic type information by calling TypeOf, which returns a Type.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "reflect"
)

func main() {
    b := true
    s := ""
    n := 1
    f := 1.0
    a := []string{"foo", "bar", "baz"}

    fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(b))
    fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(s))
    fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(n))
    fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(f))
    fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(a))
}

Produces:

bool
string
int
float64
[]string

Playground

Example using ValueOf(i interface{}).Kind():

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "reflect"
)

func main() {
    b := true
    s := ""
    n := 1
    f := 1.0
    a := []string{"foo", "bar", "baz"}

    fmt.Println(reflect.ValueOf(b).Kind())
    fmt.Println(reflect.ValueOf(s).Kind())
    fmt.Println(reflect.ValueOf(n).Kind())
    fmt.Println(reflect.ValueOf(f).Kind())
    fmt.Println(reflect.ValueOf(a).Index(0).Kind()) // For slices and strings
}

Produces:

bool
string
int
float64
string

Playground

The Go reflection package has methods for inspecting the type of variables.

The following snippet will print out the reflection type of a string, integer and float.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "reflect"
)

func main() {

    tst := "string"
    tst2 := 10
    tst3 := 1.2

    fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(tst))
    fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(tst2))
    fmt.Println(reflect.TypeOf(tst3))

}

Output:

Hello, playground
string
int
float64

see: http://play.golang.org/p/XQMcUVsOja to view it in action.

More documentation here: http://golang.org/pkg/reflect/#Type

I found 3 ways to return a variable's type at runtime:

Using string formatting

func typeof(v interface{}) string {
    return fmt.Sprintf("%T", v)
}

Using reflect package

func typeof(v interface{}) string {
    return reflect.TypeOf(v).String()
}

Using type assertions

func typeof(v interface{}) string {
    switch v.(type) {
    case int:
        return "int"
    case float64:
        return "float64"
    //... etc
    default:
        return "unknown"
    }
}

Every method has a different best use case:

• string formatting - short and low footprint (not necessary to import reflect package)

• reflect package - when need more details about the type we have access to the full reflection capabilities

• type assertions - allows grouping types, for example recognize all int32, int64, uint32, uint64 types as "int"