Use Struct Tags

You can specify the way that the Go Driver converts Go structs to BSON by using struct tags.

Example: Full File

Note

Example Setup

This example connects to an instance of MongoDB by using a connection URI. To learn more about connecting to your MongoDB instance, see the Create a MongoClient guide. This example also uses the restaurants collection in the sample_restaurants database included in the Atlas sample datasets. You can load them into your database on the free tier of MongoDB Atlas by following the Get Started with Atlas Guide.

This example declares a struct of type Restaurant with the following struct tags:

A struct tag that maps the RestaurantId field to the BSON field name restaurant_id. By default, the driver marshals the other fields as the lowercase of the struct field name.
The omitempty struct tag omits the corresponding field from the inserted document when left empty.

The following code shows the Restaurant struct used in the example:

type Restaurant struct {
	Name         string
	RestaurantId string        `bson:"restaurant_id,omitempty"`
	Cuisine      string        `bson:"cuisine,omitempty"`
	Address      interface{}   `bson:"address,omitempty"`
	Borough      string        `bson:"borough,omitempty"`
	Grades       []interface{} `bson:"grades,omitempty"`
}

The following example creates a Restaurant instance and inserts it into the restaurants collection. During the insert operation, the driver interprets the struct tags to marshal the RestaurantId struct field as restaurant_id and omits fields that are left empty in the sample document:

// Specifies struct tags on a struct by using the Go driver
package main
import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"os"
	"github.com/joho/godotenv"
	"go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/v2/mongo"
	"go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver/v2/mongo/options"
)
// Specifies a different name for RestaurantID
// and marks certain fields as omitempty
type Restaurant struct {
	Name         string
	RestaurantId string        `bson:"restaurant_id,omitempty"`
	Cuisine      string        `bson:"cuisine,omitempty"`
	Address      interface{}   `bson:"address,omitempty"`
	Borough      string        `bson:"borough,omitempty"`
	Grades       []interface{} `bson:"grades,omitempty"`
}
func main() {
	if err := godotenv.Load(); err != nil {
		log.Println("No .env file found")
	}
	var uri string
	if uri = os.Getenv("MONGODB_URI"); uri == "" {
		log.Fatal("You must set your 'MONGODB_URI' environment variable. See\n\t https://www.mongodb.com/docs/drivers/go/current/usage-examples/#environment-variable")
	}
	client, err := mongo.Connect(options.Client().ApplyURI(uri))
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer func() {
		if err = client.Disconnect(context.TODO()); err != nil {
			panic(err)
		}
	}()
	coll := client.Database("sample_restaurants").Collection("restaurants")
	// Creates a Restaurant document
	newRestaurant := Restaurant{
		Name:         "Amazing Pizza",
		RestaurantId: "123456789",
		Cuisine:      "American",
	}
	// Inserts the sample document describing a restaurant into the collection
	result, err := coll.InsertOne(context.TODO(), newRestaurant)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	// Prints the ID of the inserted document
	fmt.Printf("Document inserted with ID: %s\n", result.InsertedID)
	// When you run this file, it should print:
	// Document inserted with ID: ObjectID("...")
}

Document inserted with ID: ObjectID("...")

Expected Result

After you run the full example, you can find the following document in the restaurants collection:

{
    "_id" : ObjectId("..."),
    "name" : "Amazing Pizza",
    "restaurant_id" : "123456789",
    "cuisine" : "American
}

For an example on how to find a document, see the Find Documents guide.

Additional Information

To learn more about using struct tags, converting to/from BSON, and handling potential errors, see the Work with BSON guide.

API Documentation

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Data Formats

BSON