About 3 weeks ago my good old DevLorem project was a simple PHP website that generated Lorem Ipsum text made from movie quotes of famous actors and actresses. I decided to rewrite the whole thing with Go to dive into the language and its features.

Yesterday I released version 2, the complete rewrite with many more features. A demo of the website and API is available on devlorem.kovah.de.

Using Go to develop a feature-rich application

The main idea was to have one single binary that could be used as a web server handling the website, as well as a CLI tool to generate quotes right in the terminal. The first steps of getting a simple website up and running with Go were fairly straight forward. I used the gorilla/mux package, which provides a set of tools to run a HTTP web server. The examples have given me a good direction to build both the website itself, and the API.

Adding CLI commands were a bigger task as I also had to implement the generation in the terminal. The Cobra package, also used by famous projects like Hugo, has given me the perfect framework to build all command line options.

One binary for 7 platforms, and a Docker image

One of the most important features after the rewrite: DevLorem is now available as a single binary for 7 different platforms, including Linux, macOS and Windows. With the help of the go.rice package, I was able to bundle all assets, from the quote sources to the static CSS and JavaScript for the website, into one binary.

Besides of that, I built a Docker image that is now available as kovah/devlorem on the Docker Hub. It provides all features of the tool itself.

You can download the executables from the latest release.

The first steps with Go

Go itself is an amazing language. After writing the dynamically typed PHP and Python, using a strict type system was a great step forward. I already worked with static types in Rust, which was more a pain than a help because I spent more time fighting with type abstractions than writing productive code. Go has a clear and easy to understand type system and I was able to work with it right from the start. If you want to learn Go and come from another programming language, your best way to start is the Go by Example website. It has all the important aspects of Go packed into simple examples.

I will probably use Go more in the feature, and update the CorporateLorem tool too.