Go - Imports

Imports are used when the source code depends on functionality of other packages:

• An import declaration declares a dependency relation between the importing and imported package
• The import declarations must come after the package declaration
• The program will not compile if there are missing imports or unused ones

// Importing packages from the standard library.
import "fmt"
import "math"

Grouping Imports

It’s recommended to group imports using parentheses, this is called a factored import statement:

import (
  "fmt"
  // The last element of the import path is the package name by convention
  // For example the files in this package `math/rand` begin with `package rand`.
  "math/rand"
)

Explicit Package Name

We can specify an explicit package name to refer to the imported package:

import name "import/path"

For example:

// Import the `math` package and use an explicit name `m` to refer to it
import m "math"

// When the explicit package name is omitted it defaults
// to the name specfied in the `package` clause of the imported package.
import "fmt"

Example:

package main

import (
  "fmt"
  m "math"
)

func main() {
  // Using `m.Pi` instead of `math.Pi`.
  fmt.Println(m.Pi)
}

Explicit package names can be used to avoid conflicts when importing packages with the same name:

import (
  crand "crypto/rand"
  "math/rand"
)

If an explicit period . is used instead of an explicit name, all the exported identifiers declared in that package will be declared in the importing source file’s file block and must be accessed without a package name:

package main

import (
  "fmt"

  // Using a period `.` instead of a package name.
  . "time"
)

func main() {
  // Using `Now()` instead of `time.Now()`.
  fmt.Println(Now())
}

Import Package for Side Effects

To import a package only for its side-effects (initialization), the blank identifier _ is used as the explicit package name:

import (
  "database/sql"

  _ "github.com/lib/pq" // Import only for initialization
)