Golang echo.JSON turns Zero time.Time as Empty String but I Expect to be Returned as "0001-01-01 00:00:00"

Question

Hi I want to ask some question regarding Golang echo.JSON() method. This line of code will return a virtualAccount struct

func (h virtualAccountsServiceHandler) Get(c echo.Context) (err error) {
virtualAccountID := c.Param("id")

virtualAccount, err := h.service.GetByID(c.Request().Context(), virtualAccountID)
if err != nil {
    return
}


return c.JSON(http.StatusOK, virtualAccount)}

And this is the struct

type VirtualAccount struct {
ID                 string    `json:"id"`
ExpirationDate     time.Time `json:"expirationDate"`
CreatedAt          time.Time `json:"createdAt"`
UpdatedAt          time.Time `json:"updatedAt"`
DeletedAt          time.Time `json:"-"`}

This function returns normally if the ExpirationDate is a normal date. But the problem arise when the data contains zero time.Time (0001-01-01 00:00:00.000 as stated here https://pkg.go.dev/time).

h.service.GetByID method will returns the date as it is (0001-01-01 00:00:00.000) but the echo.JSON will return empty string "" because now the time data has value of time.Time{}.

How to make echo.JSON returns it as it is (0001-01-01 00:00:00.000)?

Answer 1

I tested this code:

package main

import (
    "net/http"
    "time"

    "github.com/labstack/echo/v4"
    "github.com/labstack/echo/v4/middleware"
)

type Account struct {
    ExpirationDate time.Time `json:"expirationDate"`
}

func hello(c echo.Context) error {
    acc := Account{}
    return c.JSON(http.StatusOK, acc)
}

func main() {
    e := echo.New()

    e.Use(middleware.Logger())
    e.Use(middleware.Recover())

    e.GET("/", hello)

    e.Logger.Fatal(e.Start(":1323"))
}

Its execution went like this:

$ go run main.go 

   ____    __
  / __/___/ /  ___
 / _// __/ _ \/ _ \
/___/\__/_//_/\___/ v4.7.2
High performance, minimalist Go web framework
https://echo.labstack.com
____________________________________O/_______
                                    O\
? http server started on [::]:1323
{"time":"2022-04-30T17:06:24.090332232-03:00","id":"","remote_ip":"127.0.0.1","host":"localhost:1323","method":"GET","uri":"/","user_agent":"curl/7.29.0","status":200,"error":"","latency":146878,"latency_human":"146.878µs","bytes_in":0,"bytes_out":42}

However it returned what you expected:

$ curl localhost:1323
{"expirationDate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z"}