I would like to get a slice of people ([]People) from the following xml:
<file> <person> <name>John Doe</name> <age>18</age> </person> <person> <name>Jane Doe</name> <age>20</age> </person> </file> (All other similar questions were too specific and verbose)
You need to create two structs:
<file> </file><person> </person>Please see the comments inside the code:
package main import ( "encoding/xml" "fmt" ) var sourceXML = []byte(`<file> <person> <name>John Doe</name> <age>18</age> </person> <person> <name>Jane Doe</name> <age>20</age> </person> </file>`) // Define a structure for each record type Person struct { Name string `xml:"name"` Age int `xml:"age"` } // There needs to be a single struct to unmarshal into // File acts like that one root struct type File struct { People []Person `xml:"person"` } func main() { // Initialize an empty struct var file File err := xml.Unmarshal(sourceXML, &file) if err != nil { fmt.Println(err) } // file.People returns only the []Person rather than the root // file struct with it's contents fmt.Printf("%+v", file.People) } // output: // [{Name:John Doe Age:18} {Name:Jane Doe Age:20}] Edit. Kaedys said the File and Person structures can also be nested (using anonymous structs) as follows:
type File struct { People []struct { Name string `xml:"name"` Age int `xml:"age"` } `xml:"person"` } 
file := File{} has the exact same effect and is less readable than var file File (golint will complain about it, too). play.golang.org/p/pCtSsx7LbZD
structure kind of maps ontostructs quite easily. You have 1structure containing severalpersonstructures, which you want to map on a slice ofPeopletype. Why not wrap[]Peoplein aFiletype?