go-option: library to work with optional types

November 28, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

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go-option: library to work with optional types

Package option implements effective and useful instruments to work with optional types in Go. It eliminates code doubling and provides high performance due to:

  • no memory allocations
  • serialization without reflection (at least for pre-generated types)
  • support for basic and custom types

Table of contents

Installation

go install github.com/tarantool/go-option@latest

Documentation

You could run the godoc server on localhost:6060 with the command:

make godoc_run

And open the generated documentation in another terminal or use the link:

make godoc_open

Quick start

Using pre-generated optional types

Generated types follow the pattern Optional and provide methods for working with optional values:

// Create an optional with a value.
opt := option.SomeString("hello")

// Check if a value is present.
if opt.IsSome() {
    value := opt.Unwrap()
    fmt.Println(value)
}

// Use a default value if none.
value := opt.UnwrapOr("default")

// Encode to MessagePack.
err := opt.EncodeMsgpack(encoder)

Using generic approach

type SomeType struct {
    name string
    number int
}

// Create an optional with a value.
opt := option.Some(SomeType{"hello", 42})

// Check if a value is present.
if opt.IsSome() {
    value := opt.Unwrap()
    fmt.Println(value)
}

// Use a default value if none.
value := opt.UnwrapOr(SomeType{"default", 0})

// Encode to MessagePack.
err := opt.EncodeMsgpack(encoder)

Usage with go-tarantool

It may be necessary to use an optional type in a structure. For example, to distinguish between a nil value and a missing one.

package main

import (
  "github.com/tarantool/go-option"
  tarantool "github.com/tarantool/go-tarantool/v2"
)

type User struct {
	// may be used in conjunciton with 'msgpack:",omitempty"' directive to skip fields
    _msgpack struct{} `msgpack:",asArray"` //nolint: structcheck,unused
    Name     string
    Phone    option.String
}

func main() {
    var conn *tarantool.Doer
    // Initialize tarantool connection

    // Imagine you get a slice of users from Tarantool.
    users := []User{
        {
            Name: "Nosipho Nnenne",
            Phone: option.SomeString("+15056463408"),
        },
        {
            Name:  "Maryamu Efe",
            Phone: option.NoneString(),
        },
        {
            Name: "Venera Okafor",
        },
    }

    for id, user := range users {
        conn.Do(
            tarantool.NewInsertRequest("users").Tuple(user),
        )
    }
}

Gentype Utility

A Go code generator for creating optional types with MessagePack serialization support.

Overview

Gentype generates wrapper types for various Go primitives and custom types that implement optional (some/none) semantics with full MessagePack serialization capabilities. These generated types are useful for representing values that may or may not be present, while ensuring proper encoding and decoding when using MessagePack.

Features

  • Generates optional types for built-in types (bool, int, float, string, etc.)
  • Supports custom types with MessagePack extension serialization
  • Provides common optional type operations:
    • SomeXxx(value) - Create an optional with a value
    • NoneXxx() - Create an empty optional
    • Unwrap(), UnwrapOr(), UnwrapOrElse() - Value extraction
    • IsSome(), IsNil() - Presence checking
  • Full MessagePack CustomEncoder and CustomDecoder implementation
  • Type-safe operations

Gentype installation

go install github.com/tarantool/go-option/cmd/gentypes@latest
# OR (for go version 1.24+)
go get -tool github.com/tarantool/go-option/cmd/gentypes@latest

Generating Optional Types

To generate optional types for existing types in a package:

gentypes -package ./path/to/package -ext-code 123
# OR (for go version 1.24+)
go tool gentypes -package ./path/to/package -ext-code 123

Or you can use it to generate file from go:

//go:generate go run github.com/tarantool/go-option/cmd/gentypes@latest -ext-code 123
// OR (for go version 1.24+)
//go:generate go tool gentypes -ext-code 123

Flags:

  • -package: Path to the Go package containing types to wrap (default: ".")
  • -ext-code: MessagePack extension code to use for custom types (must be between -128 and 127, no default value)
  • -verbose: Enable verbose output (default: false)
  • -force: Ignore absence of marshal/unmarshal methods on type (default: false). Helpful for types from third-party modules.
  • -imports: Add imports to generated file (default is empty). Helpful for types from third-party modules.
  • -marshal-func: func that should do marshaling (default is MarshalMsgpack method). Helpful for types from third-party modules. Should be func of type func(v T) ([]byte, error) and should be located in the same dir or should be imported.
  • -unmarshal-func: func that should do unmarshalling (default is UnmarshalMsgpack method). Helpful for types from third-party modules. Should be func of type func(v *T, data []byte) error and should be located in the same dir or should be imported.

Generating Optional Types for Third-Party Modules

Sometimes you need to generate an optional type for a type from a third-party module, and you can't add MarshalMsgpack/UnmarshalMsgpack methods to it. In this case, you can use the -force, -imports, -marshal-func, and -unmarshal-func flags.

For example, to generate an optional type for github.com/google/uuid.UUID:

  1. Create a file with marshal and unmarshal functions for the third-party type. For example, uuid.go:

    package main

import (
    "errors"

    "github.com/google/uuid"
)

func encodeUUID(uuid uuid.UUID) ([]byte, error) {
    return uuid[:], nil
}

var (
    ErrInvalidLength = errors.New("invalid length")
)

func decodeUUID(uuid *uuid.UUID, data []byte) error {
    if len(data) != len(uuid) {
        return ErrInvalidLength
    }
    copy(uuid[:], data)
    return nil
}

  2. Use the following go:generate command:

    //go:generate go run github.com/tarantool/go-option/cmd/gentypes@latest -package . -imports "github.com/google/uuid" -type UUID -marshal-func "encodeUUID" -unmarshal-func "decodeUUID" -force -ext-code 100

Using Generated Types

Generated types provide methods for working with optional values and 2 constructors for every single type: Some<TypeName> creates option with some value and None<TypeName> creates the empty one ( is the original type name started with upper case):

// Create an optional with a value.
opt := option.SomeString("hello")

// Check if a value is present.
if opt.IsSome() {
    value := opt.Unwrap()
    fmt.Println(value)
}

// Use a default value if none.
value := opt.UnwrapOr("default")

// Encode to MessagePack.
err := opt.EncodeMsgpack(encoder)

Development

You could use our Makefile targets:

make codespell
make test
make testrace
make coveralls-deps
make coveralls
make coverage

Run tests

To run default set of tests directly:

go test ./... -count=1

Benchmarking

Along with the approach supplied with go-option library pointer-based and slice-based approaches were benchmarked as well.

Init + Get (empty value)

# int
BenchmarkNoneInt/Typed-8        	560566400	 2.200 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneInt/Generic-8      	543332625	 2.193 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneInt/GenericPtr-8   	487631254	 2.474 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneInt/GenericSlice-8 	441513422	 2.608 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
# string
BenchmarkNoneString/Typed-8        	170894025	 6.545 ns/op	 0 B/op	 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneString/Generic-8      	185572758	 6.451 ns/op	 0 B/op	 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneString/GenericPtr-8   	159143874	 7.459 ns/op	 0 B/op	 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneString/GenericSlice-8 	173419598	 6.708 ns/op	 0 B/op	 0 allocs/op
# struct
BenchmarkNoneStruct/Typed-8        	384845384	 3.107 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneStruct/Generic-8      	415633797	 2.884 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneStruct/GenericPtr-8   	331620082	 3.580 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
BenchmarkNoneStruct/GenericSlice-8 	387593746	 3.115 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op

Init + Get (non-empty value)

# int
BenchmarkSomeInt/Typed-8        	499550200	 2.231 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeInt/Generic-8      	321369986	 3.491 ns/op	 0 B/op	  0 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeInt/GenericPtr-8   	 64221356	 16.03 ns/op	 8 B/op	  1 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeInt/GenericSlice-8 	 71858188	 16.53 ns/op	 8 B/op	  1 allocs/op
# string
BenchmarkSomeString/Typed-8        	192472155	 5.840 ns/op	  0 B/op	 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeString/Generic-8      	197161162	 6.471 ns/op	  0 B/op	 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeString/GenericPtr-8   	 16207524	 98.67 ns/op	 16 B/op	 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeString/GenericSlice-8 	 12426998	 100.4 ns/op	 16 B/op	 1 allocs/op
# struct
BenchmarkSomeStruct/Typed-8          	358631294	 3.407 ns/op	  0 B/op	   0 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeStruct/Generic-8        	241312274	 4.978 ns/op	  0 B/op	   0 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeStruct/GenericPtr-8     	 32534370	 33.28 ns/op	 24 B/op	 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkSomeStruct/GenericSlice-8   	 34119435	 33.08 ns/op	 24 B/op	 1 allocs/op

At this point we can see already that the alternatives (based on pointer and slice) require allocations while the approach implemented in go-option doesn't.

Now let's check encoding and decoding.

Encode + Decode

# int
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeInt/Typed-8        	46089481	 22.66 ns/op	  0 B/op	 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeInt/Generic-8      	10070619	 119.6 ns/op	 32 B/op	 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeInt/GenericPtr-8   	20202076	 58.14 ns/op	 16 B/op	 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeInt/GenericSlice-8 	17400481	 66.24 ns/op	 24 B/op	 3 allocs/op
# string
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeString/Typed-8        	 6053182	 191.4 ns/op	  8 B/op	 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeString/Generic-8      	 1891269	 668.3 ns/op	 56 B/op	 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeString/GenericPtr-8   	 1645518	 659.2 ns/op	 56 B/op	 4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeString/GenericSlice-8 	 1464177	 775.4 ns/op	 72 B/op	 5 allocs/op
# struct
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeStruct/Typed-8        	12816339	 90.85 ns/op	  3 B/op	 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeStruct/Generic-8      	 2304001	 532.5 ns/op	 67 B/op	 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeStruct/GenericPtr-8   	 2071520	 570.2 ns/op	 75 B/op	 4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncodeDecodeStruct/GenericSlice-8 	 2007445	 587.4 ns/op	 99 B/op	 5 allocs/op

As it can be seen generic implementation ~3-4 times slower than the typed one. Thus it is recommended to use pre-generated optionals for basic types supplied with go-option (option.Int, option.String etc.).

License

BSD 2-Clause License