Unmarshaling json in Golang: required field?

There is no tag in the encoding/json package that sets a field to "required". You will either have to write your own MarshalJSON() method, or do a post check for missing fields.

To check for missing fields, you will have to use pointers in order to distinguish between missing/null and zero values:

type JsonStruct struct {
    String *string
    Number *float64
}

Full working example:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "encoding/json"
)

type JsonStruct struct {
    String *string
    Number *float64
}

var rawJson = []byte(`{
    "string":"We do not provide a number"
}`)


func main() {
    var s *JsonStruct
    err := json.Unmarshal(rawJson, &s)
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    if s.String == nil {
        panic("String is missing or null!")
    }

    if s.Number == nil {
        panic("Number is missing or null!")
    }

    fmt.Printf("String: %s  Number: %f\n", *s.String, *s.Number)
}

Playground

You can also override the unmarshalling for a specific type (so a required field buried in a few json layers) without having to make the field a pointer. UnmarshalJSON is defined by the Unmarshaler interface.

type EnumItem struct {                                                                                            
    Named                                                                                                         
    Value string                                                                                                  
}                                                                                                                 

func (item *EnumItem) UnmarshalJSON(data []byte) (err error) {                                                    
    required := struct {                                                                                          
        Value *string `json:"value"`                                                                              
    }{}                                                                                                           
    all := struct {                                                                                               
        Named                                                                                                     
        Value string `json:"value"`                                                                               
    }{}                                                                                                           
    err = json.Unmarshal(data, &required)                                                                         
    if err != nil {                                                                                               
        return                                                                                                    
    } else if required.Value == nil {                                                                             
        err = fmt.Errorf("Required field for EnumItem missing")                                                   
    } else {                                                                                                      
        err = json.Unmarshal(data, &all)                                                                          
        item.Named = all.Named                                                                                    
        item.Value = all.Value                                                                                    
    }                                                                                                             
    return                                                                                                        
}                                                       

You can just implement the Unmarshaler interface to customize how your JSON gets unmarshalled.