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Go Interfaces Usage Best Practices

Oct 10, 20242 min read

When to Use Interfaces

Interfaces should be used in the following situations:

  1. Common behavior. For example, sort.Interface, io.Reader that are used by multiple functions
  2. Decoupling. Allows to use mocks in unit tests; use different algorithm without code changes
  3. Restricting behavior. Interface on the client side restricts the set of methods that can be called

As a general rule:

  1. We should create an interface when we need it, not when we foresee that we could need it
  2. We should accept interfaces and return structs
  3. Interfaces should be as small as possible, because the bigger the interface, the weaker the abstraction

Interface on the Producer Side Anti-Pattern

Interfaces generally should be created on the client side, not the producer side

Defining the interface on the producer side forces clients to depend on all the methods of the interface. Instead, the client should define the interface with only the methods it needs. This relates to the concept of the interface segregation principle, which states that no client should be forced to depend on methods it doesn’t use

Note that interfaces sometimes can be used on the producer side. For example, io package exports interfaces because it also needs to export generic-use functions like io.Copy:

func Copy(dst Writer, src Reader) (written int64, err error)

Returning Interface Anti-Pattern

In most cases we should return concrete implementations, not interfaces

Returning concrete types means that we can add new methods without breaking backward compatibility. Also, clients can use all the methods of the type, not just the one defined in interface

There are exceptions in the standard library, for example error interface and io.LimitReader function that returns io.Reader instead of io.LimitedReader. Although, it seems, that returning io.Reader instead of a concrete io.LimitReader was a mistake by Go designers

Obviously, if a function needs to be able to return multiple implementations, it must return an interface

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