How to Customize Date Parsing for time.Time Fields in Go When Unmarshalling XML?

Custom XML Date Parsing in Go with time.Time Fields

Golang provides the flexibility to unmarshal XML data into custom structs, but it doesn't support specifying custom date formats for time.Time fields when unmarshaling XML. This can lead to parsing errors when the returned date format differs from the default Go format.

CustomUnmarshaler Solution

To overcome this limitation, you can create a custom struct with an anonymous time.Time field and implement your own UnmarshalXML method. This method will parse the date string using your custom format and set the time.Time field accordingly.

type customTime struct {
    time.Time
}

func (c *customTime) UnmarshalXML(d *xml.Decoder, start xml.StartElement) error {
    const shortForm = "20060102" // yyyymmdd date format
    var v string
    d.DecodeElement(&v, &start)
    parse, err := time.Parse(shortForm, v)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    *c = customTime{parse}
    return nil
}

Incorporating the Custom Struct

Update your Transaction struct to include the custom time field:

type Transaction struct {
    //...
    DateEntered     customTime     `xml:"enterdate"`
    //...
}

Now, the XML unmarshalling will use the customTime struct and parse the date string according to your defined format.

Additional Notes

If the XML element uses an attribute for the date, you need to implement UnmarshalXMLAttr in the same manner. Refer to the example in the provided code snippet for guidance.

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