Issue HTTP GET with form values in Go

Question

I see there is an easy way to send a post with form values, but is there a function I could use to do essentially the same as PostForm but for a GET request?

-- edit --

Basically, I want to construct the URL: https://uri.com?key=value but without using string concatenation with unescaped keys and values.

Do you want to send the form as the request body (which is usually ignored by a server for GET requests) or do you send the form as query parameters? — Cerise Limón, May 11 '18 at 01:38
@EatonEmmerich Note that that is not called a Form or anything related to a post, you just want to construct a query string. See of [Go doing a GET request and building the Querystring](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30652577/go-doing-a-get-request-and-building-the-querystring) — nos, May 11 '18 at 13:22

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 11 '18 at 13:50

1

Encode the query parameters using Values.Encode. Concatenate the base URL and query parameters to get the actual URL.

resp, err := http.Get(fmt.Sprintf("%s?%s", baseURL, data.Encode()))

answered May 11 '18 at 13:50

Cerise Limón

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thanks, The net/url Values was the missing link! Also, this one is shorter than the duplicate answers – Eaton Emmerich May 14 '18 at 00:43

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered May 11 '18 at 00:34

As explained in this question, you probably don't actually want to do this. Most servers won't do anything useful with a form body in a GET request—and most that do will just treat it as synonymous with the same parameters sent in a query string, in which case you should just put them in the query string of your url.URL object in the first place.

However, if you do have a good reason to do this, you can. As the docs you linked explain, PostForm is just a thin convenience wrapper around NewRequest and Do. Just as you're expected to use NewRequest yourself if you want to add custom headers, you can use it to attach a body.

And if you look at the source to PostForm, it's pretty trivial:

return c.Post(url, "application/x-www-form-urlencoded", strings.NewReader(data.Encode()))

Basically, instead of this:

resp, err := client.PostForm(url, data)

… you do this:

body := strings.NewReader(data.Encode())
req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", url, body)
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
resp, err := client.Do(req)

Issue HTTP GET with form values in Go

2 Answers2