Handling Routing for Our REST Services

In this chapter, we will discuss routing of the application. For creating an API, the first step is to define routes. So, to define routes, we need to figure out available constructs in Go. We begin with the basic internal routing mechanism in Go. Then, we see how to create a custom Multiplexer. Since ServeMux's capabilities are very limited, we will explore a few other frameworks built to serve this purpose. This chapter also includes creating routes using third-party libraries such as httprouter and Gorilla Mux. We are going to build a URL-shortening API throughout this book. In this chapter, we define routes for the API. Then, we discuss topics like SQL injection of an URL. A web framework allows the developer to create a route as the first step and then attach handlers to it. Those handlers hold the business logic of the application. The crux of this chapter is teaching you how to create HTTP routers in Go using Gorilla Mux. We also discuss how URL-shortening service functions and try to design a logical implementation.

We will cover the following topics:

• Building a basic web server in Go
• Understanding the net/http package
• ServeMux, a basic router in Go
• Understanding httprouter, a router package
• Introducing Gorilla Mux, a powerful HTTP router
• Introducing URL shortening service design