Defining REST APIs and routes

While writing RESTful APIs, it's very common to authenticate the user before allowing them to access it. A prerequisite to authenticating the user is to create the API routes, which we will be covering in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Install the github.com/gorilla/mux and github.com/gorilla/handlers packages using the go get command, as follows:

$ go get github.com/gorilla/mux
$ go get github.com/gorilla/handlers

2. Create http-rest-api.go, where we will define three routes—/status, /get-token and /employees—along with their handlers, as follows:

package main
import 
(
  "encoding/json"
  "log"
  "net/http"
  "os"
  "github.com/gorilla/handlers"
  "github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
const 
(
  CONN_HOST = "localhost"
  CONN_PORT = "8080"
)
type Employee struct 
{
  Id int `json:"id"`
  FirstName string `json:"firstName"`
  LastName string `json:"lastName"`
}
type Employees []Employee
var employees []Employee
func init() 
{
  employees = Employees
  {
    Employee{Id: 1, FirstName...