Field tags

The name of the root tag can be changed using the XMLName field in a data structure. There are some other features of field tags that can be really useful:

• Tags with - are omitted.
• A tag with the attr option becomes an attribute of the parent element.
• A tag with the innerxml option is written verbatim, useful for lazy decoding.
• The omitempty option works the same as it does for JSON; it will not produce a tag for zero values.
• The tag can contain a path in the XML using > as a separator, as a > b > c.
• Anonymous struct fields are treated as if the fields of its value were in the outer struct.

Let's take a look at a practical example that uses some of these features:

type Character struct {
    XMLName     struct{} `xml:"character"`
    Name        string   `xml:"name"`
    Surname     string   `xml:"surname"`
    Job         string   `xml:"details>job,omitempty"`
    YearOfBirth int      `xml:"year_of_birth,attr,omitempty"`
    IgnoreMe    string   `xml:"-"`
}

This structure produces the following XML:

<character year_of_birth="1871">
  <name>Henry</name>
  <surname>Wentworth Akeley</surname>
  <details>
    <job>farmer</job>
  </details>
</character>

The full example is available here: https://play.golang.org/p/6zdl9__M0zF.