Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this “gophering” thing lately, and I figured I’d jot down what I did, start to finish. It’s not rocket science, but maybe it’ll help someone out there.
Getting Started
First things first, I had to figure out what I actually wanted to do. I mean, “gophering” is a pretty broad term, right? I decided to keep it simple: I just wanted a basic server that could spit out some text, nothing fancy.
So, I grabbed my laptop, fired up my trusty text editor, and started typing away. I’m using Go, obviously, ’cause, well, “gopher,” get it? Anyway, I whipped up a basic “Hello, world!” type program. You know, the usual:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"log"
"net/http"
func handler(w *, r *) {
*(w, "Well, hello there! This is my Go server speaking.n")
func main() {
*("/", handler)
*("Listening on port 8080...")
*(*(":8080", nil))
See? Nothing crazy. Just a simple function (handler) that writes some text to the response, and a main function that sets up the server to listen on port 8080.
Running the Thing
Next, I saved that code as, like, or something. Then, I opened up my terminal (I’m a terminal kind of guy, what can I say?) and navigated to the folder where I saved the file. Then I just typed:
go run *
Boom! The terminal printed out “Listening on port 8080…”, which meant the server was up and running. Easy peasy.
Testing it Out
Of course, I had to make sure it actually worked. So, I opened up my web browser and typed in localhost:8080. And there it was! My message: “Well, hello there! This is my Go server speaking.” I felt like a god, creating digital life with my bare hands (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but it was still cool).
Making it a Bit More Interesting
After the initial excitement wore off, I decided to spice things up a little. I mean, a server that just says “hello” is kinda boring, right? So, I tweaked the handler function to print out the current time. I did a little search to remember exactly the fomate and I messed around it a little and ended up with this:
func handler(w *, r *) {
currentTime := *().Format(*1123)
*(w, "Well, hello there! The current time is: %sn", currentTime)
I saved the file, restarted the server (just Ctrl+C in the terminal to stop it, then go run * again), and refreshed the browser. Now it was showing the current time! Much more interesting, if I do say so myself.
Wrapping Up
And that’s pretty much it! That’s my little “gophering” adventure for today. I set up a simple Go server, got it running, and even made it do something slightly useful. It’s not going to win any awards, but it was a fun little project, and I learned a few things along the way. Maybe next time I’ll try something more complicated, like, I don’t know, making it serve up actual web pages or something. We’ll see!
