Golang or also known as Go is an open-source compiled programming language that helps build simple, systematic, and secure software.
Google designed this almost 15 years back. This has been readily adopted by developers’ world over due to its similarity to C-language with features such as memory safety, structural typing, and garbage collection.
Golang is a statically typed programming language. It was developed with the aim to enhance efficiency in programming. It is open-source and lightweight.
Golang web frameworks are used by developers to write application programming interfaces (APIs) and web services without much ado. Frameworks are not a necessity while building small applications. But they are needed in production-level software. This is because of the huge time consumed while coding a debugging-level production even with necessary knowledge or knowing its features.
Frameworks provide additional functionalities and services that other developers can use to add similar functionalities in their software by skipping to write the full-fledged software themselves.
Go language aims to be modern, with support for networked and multicore computing. It also takes effort to combine the ease of programming of an interpreted, dynamically typed language with efficiency and safety of a statically typed, compiled language.
- Go reduces the physical effort put in by developers. Developers have succeeded in reducing clutter and complexity in its design.
- Forward declarations and header files have been eliminated and everything is declared ones.
- Stuttering is cut down via a simple derivation.
- There is no type hierarchy as they don’t have to announce any relationships.
The top web frameworks in Golang on the basis of popularity are listed as follows:
Pros of Golang Web Frameworks:
- Static:It has a primitive type and structures helps programmers to detect bugs easily. It also has in-built lists and maps that can be used while integrating in the web app.
- Interface: Interface Types need to be satisfied with the method, where structure has an important role. This makes the code independent. Interfaces help in churning scalable and modular code.
Cons of Golang Web Frameworks:
- Non-attentive Community: There is no community support with any kind of suggestion nor respond or offer.
- Generics: Golang lacks Generics. Those familiar with Java find it huge. The code cannot be reused which eats away valuable time. Therefore function written for one type isn’t reusable for another type of collection.
Golang Web Frameworks For Web App Development
1. gin
The gin framework tops the list in terms of acceptance due to its simple framework and performance. It is frequently used to build a REST API for the backend. If and when a programmer wants to develop a single page application using a frontend framework. This framework makes use of the HTTP routers for handling traffic and is ideal for beginners.
Go supports essential libraries and features therefore it is suitable to develop high-performance REST APIs.
The API of this web framework is similar to that of martini but is almost 40 times faster. Working with gin is easy and reliable due to huge community of users who have created well-tested middleware.
But the biggest flaw it has is that it is not suitable for smaller applications. Therefore you cannot depend on gin to develop large backend applications or enterprise-level server complex functions.
2. beego
Beego is a rapid web app development framework useful for quick development of REST APIs, web applications, and backend services in Golang. It is pretty similar to the Django web framework in Python. But it also contains definite features of Golang such as interfaces, struct embedding and does not involve any third-party installations. It has an inbuilt called Bee Tool to locate code changes and is a mature Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework with its own libraries.
It contains eight modules that you can use or ignore as per the requirement of your project. It incorporates Object-Relationship Map (ORM) to organize the application’s database along with session handling tools and logging systems. It also combines a cache handler and libraries for operating HTTP elements. Another feature worth mentioning here is it’s similar way to how Django works in using command-line tools.
One drawback why beego is not suitable for beginners is due to its high functionality and extensive features.
3. echo
Echo is a good performing, uncluttered and extensible web framework in Golang. It has a highly efficient HTTP router that smartly prioritizes routes with zero dynamic memory allocation. It helps build robust and scalable REST APIs that is easily organized into groups. It installs TLS certificates automatically from Let’s Encrypt and improves speed by providing HTTP/2 support to enhance user experience. It has many useable inbuilt middlewares. Developers can define their own to set at a root, group, or route level.
Echo supports data binding for HTTP request payload, including XML, JSON, or form-data. It contains an API to send a various HTTP responses, including JSON, XML, HTML, file, and attachment. Templates can be rendered using any template engine and have modified central HTTP error handling.
As every framework has its downside so does Echo, it is maintained by a single developer and code updates is haphazard.
4. kit
Kit framework helps building tough, dependable, and sustainable microservices in Golang. It combines a set of packages and best practices to provide an inclusive, robust, and dependable way of building microservices for all kinds of organizations. Go is an all-encompassing language, but microservices demands specialized support.
The kit framework provides Remote Procedure Call (RPC) safety, transparency, and infrastructure assimilation. It is a combination of several co-related packages, forming a responsive framework for constructing large Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs).
This makes Golang an able language for writing microservices. It is designed for effective collaboration thereby developers can choose databases, components, platform, and architecture that suits them best.
The issue with Kit framework is due to substantial use of interfaces the overhead of adding API to the service is high.
5. fasthttp
Due to limits of Net/http in optimization opportunities fasthttp framework was introduced as it provides fast HTTP server and client API. It is optimized for speed and can handle 100K qps or more. It can also handle 1M concurrent live connections with the latest hardware. It can handle low memory usage and inititates easy connection upgrade support.
Fasthttp API is designed to prolong existing client and server executions. Or to write custom client and server implementations from inception. A gamut of information is presented to the request handler, such as unique request-id, server / client address, per-request logger, etc.
Net/http is reliable and tested as it has a wider audience.
As far as con for fasthttp goes, both net/http and fasthttp are discordant, whereby developers find it difficult to migrate from net/http to fasthttp.
Conclusion – Golang Web Frameworks
The above-given framework is some of the most used Golang web frameworks at present compiled on the basis of popularity. Each framework has its own set of features to play around with before implementing any particular framework.
But before you begin, make sure that you clearly understand necessary requirements. Last but not the least, Golang also has other frameworks in their repertoire such as Revel, Buffalo, Martini, Goji, etc.
After an Engineering degree and a Diploma in Management I devoted 16+ years working in the automotive industry. My innate skill and extreme passion in writing, encouraged me to adopt it up as a profession. I have been writing for more than 10+ years in the software industry. The 400+ blogs I published are informative, exhaustive and interesting to a professional and causal reader.
