JSON object flatten/unflatten in Golang
One of the new things that Amazon IoT adding above MQTT is the shadow doc. Shadow doc provides a traditional way (aka HTTP) to get the current status of a device that connects via MQTT.
Basic function of a shadow doc is the ability to update part of its JSON object. For example, one thermostat has shadow { "ambient": 25.1 }, then has the setPoint updated with { "setPoint": { "cool": 20.5 } } to get combined doc:
{
"ambient": 25.1,
"setPoint": {
"cool": 20.5
}
}
It can be achieved with JSON supported databases, like Postgresql or MongoDB. Before that, I need to flatten the JSON object.
There is good package in JS flat that serve the purpose well. I used it with aedes as a small clone of AWS IoT pretty good.
In Golang, package flatten serve for the same purpose. I find it lacks options to keep the slice, the max deep option to be compatible with AWS IoT shadow doc. This leads me to release the flat for Golang at https://github.com/nqd/flat.
This simple package is enough for me to build a shadow doc, though there are some more options for the package to make it more “complete”:
- Safe option for Unflatten
- Overwrite.