How to use go-bindata with html/template

📅 Mon, Mar 27, 2017 ⏱️ One-minute read

What is go-bindata and why do we need it?

go-bindata converts any text or binary file into Go source code, which is useful for embedding data into Go programs. So you can build your whole project into 1 binary file for easier delivery.

html/template

html/template’s functions Parse, ParseFiles works only with files on the filesystem, so we need to implement a port to work with both approaches: files or go-bindata.

Pull sample code to play with:

git clone git@github.com:plutov/go-bindata-tpl.git

go build && ./go-bindata-tpl

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<body>
Hello
</body>
</html>

Generate templates with go-bindata

We need to install go-bindata CLI and generate a .go file from our templates:

go get -u github.com/jteeuwen/go-bindata/...
go-bindata -o tpl.go tpl

I prefer to add last command to go:generate:

//go:generate go-bindata -o tpl.go tpl

Use go-bindata templates

I made it by providing a flag -go-bindata:

./go-bindata-tpl -go-bindata
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<body>
Hello
</body>
</html>

Conclusion

With go-bindata you can simplify your deployment with only one binary file.
go-bindata can give you a little faster templates reading.
Note that if you use ParseFiles you have to change it to work with Assert function.