Introducing gobox: A Lightweight Go Framework with Modules and Usage Examples

gobox is a self‑developed lightweight Go framework that provides a collection of utility packages (called boxes) such as color, crypto, exception, gohttp, golog, gomisc, and others, with the source hosted at https://github.com/goinbox.

The name “gobox” comes from the design where each independent module is a “box”, and the whole collection forms the “gobox”. It evolved from an earlier Go project that implemented a Raft‑based code release system.

Supported boxes include:

├── color          // 为终端输出增加颜色
├── crypto         // 常用加解密相关
├── encoding       // 常用编解码相关
├── exception      // 用errno+msg表示的错误
├── gohttp         // http服务相关
├── golog          // log记录相关
├── gomisc         // 零碎的工具库
├── go-nsq-mate    // 配合操作nsq队列
├── inotify        // 文件系统通知
├── levelcache     // 使用leveldb实现的本地cache
├── mysql          // mysql操作相关
├── page           // 分页操作
├── pool           // 连接池实现
├── redis          // redis操作相关
├── shardmap       // 为减小map锁粒度实现的碎片化map
├── shell          // 执行shell命令相关
├── simplecache    // 内存cache

Each box can be imported as a regular Go package. For example, the color box provides functions to output colored text:

package main

import (
    "github.com/goinbox/color"

    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    fmt.Println(string(color.Black([]byte("Black"))))
    fmt.Println(string(color.Red([]byte("Red"))))
    fmt.Println(string(color.Green([]byte("Green"))))
    fmt.Println(string(color.Yellow([]byte("Yellow"))))
    fmt.Println(string(color.Blue([]byte("Blue"))))
    fmt.Println(string(color.Maganta([]byte("Maganta"))))
    fmt.Println(string(color.Cyan([]byte("Cyan"))))
    fmt.Println(string(color.White([]byte("White"))))
}

The exception package defines errors with an errno and message, offering a simple wrapper around Go’s panic/recover mechanism:

package main

import (
    "github.com/goinbox/exception"

    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    e := exception.New(101, "test exception")

    fmt.Println(e.Errno(), e.Msg())
    fmt.Println(e.Error())
}

Sample output:

101 test exception
errno: 101, msg: test exception

The gomisc box contains many helper functions. Examples include slice deduplication:

package main

import (
    "github.com/goinbox/gomisc"

    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    is := []int{1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4}
    fmt.Println("origin slice is: ", is)

    is = gomisc.IntSliceUnique(is)
    fmt.Println("after call slice is: ", is)

    ss := []string{"a", "ab", "ab", "abc", "abc", "abc", "abcd", "abcd", "abcd", "abcd", "abcd"}
    fmt.Println("origin slice is: ", ss)

    ss = gomisc.StringSliceUnique(ss)
    fmt.Println("after call slice is: ", ss)
}

Result:

origin slice is:  [1 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 4]
after call slice is:  [1 2 3 4]
origin slice is:  [a ab ab abc abc abc abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd]
after call slice is:  [a ab abc abcd]

Other utilities demonstrated are file and directory existence checks, byte slice appending, recursive file listing, JSON file saving and parsing, substring extraction, time‑format constants, a general time layout, and generating random numbers based on the current time.

For instance, checking file existence:

package main

import (
    "github.com/goinbox/gomisc"

    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    f := "/etc/passwd"

    r := gomisc.FileExist(f)
    if r {
        fmt.Println(f, "is exist")
    } else {
        fmt.Println(f, "is not exist")
    }

    d := "/home/ligang/devspace"

    r = gomisc.DirExist(d)
    if r {
        fmt.Println(d, "is exist")
    } else {
        fmt.Println(d, "is not exist")
    }
}

Result:

/etc/passwd is exist
/home/ligang/devspace is exist

Time formatting constants are defined as:

TIME_FMT_STR_YEAR   = "2006"
TIME_FMT_STR_MONTH  = "01"
TIME_FMT_STR_DAY    = "02"
TIME_FMT_STR_HOUR   = "15"
TIME_FMT_STR_MINUTE = "04"
TIME_FMT_STR_SECOND = "05"

Generating a random number from a time value:

package main

import (
    "github.com/goinbox/gomisc"

    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    tm := time.Now()
    fmt.Println(gomisc.RandByTime(&tm), gomisc.RandByTime(&tm), gomisc.RandByTime(nil))
}

Output (example):

4423491624236117727 4423491624236117727 1471010178475409526

The article concludes by inviting users to try gobox and provide feedback via the official technical public account.