Golang/Gin codebase containing real world examples (CRUD, auth, advanced patterns, etc) that adheres to the RealWorld spec and API.

This codebase was created to demonstrate a fully fledged fullstack application built with Golang/Gin including CRUD operations, authentication, routing, pagination, and more.

This project has been modernized with the following updates:

• Go 1.21+: Updated from Go 1.15 to require Go 1.21 or higher
• GORM v2: Migrated from deprecated jinzhu/gorm v1 to gorm.io/gorm v2
• JWT v5: Updated from deprecated dgrijalva/jwt-go to golang-jwt/jwt/v5 (fixes CVE-2020-26160)
• Validator v10: Updated validator tags and package to match gin v1.10.0
• Latest Dependencies: All dependencies updated to their 2025 production-stable versions
• RealWorld API Spec Compliance:
  • GET /profiles/:username now supports optional authentication (anonymous access allowed)
  • POST /users/login returns 401 Unauthorized on failure (previously 403)
  • GET /articles/feed registered as dedicated authenticated route
  • DELETE /articles/:slug and DELETE /articles/:slug/comments/:id return empty response body

The project maintains high test coverage across all core packages:

To generate a coverage report locally, run:

go test -coverprofile=coverage.out ./...
go tool cover -func=coverage.out

.
├── gorm.db
├── hello.go
├── common
│   ├── utils.go        //small tools function
│   └── database.go     //DB connect manager
├── users
|   ├── models.go       //data models define & DB operation
|   ├── serializers.go  //response computing & format
|   ├── routers.go      //business logic & router binding
|   ├── middlewares.go  //put the before & after logic of handle request
|   └── validators.go   //form/json checker
├── ...
...

Make sure you have Go 1.21 or higher installed.

https://golang.org/doc/install

Environment variables can be set directly in your shell or via a .env file (requires a tool like source or direnv).

Available environment variables:

PORT=8080                     # Server port (default: 8080)
GIN_MODE=debug               # Gin mode: debug or release
DB_PATH=./data/gorm.db       # SQLite database path (default: ./data/gorm.db)
TEST_DB_PATH=./data/test.db  # Optional: SQLite database path used for tests

Example usage:

# Option 1: Set environment variables directly
export PORT=3000
export DB_PATH=./data/myapp.db
go run hello.go

# Option 2: Inline with command
PORT=3000 go run hello.go

See .env.example for a complete template.

From the project root, run:

go build ./...
go test ./...
go mod tidy

# Using default port 8080
go run hello.go

# Using custom port
PORT=3000 go run hello.go

From the project root, run:

go test ./...

This backend passes the full RealWorld API spec test suite, available in two flavors (Hurl is the source of truth; the Bruno collection is generated from it). The run-spec-tests.sh script downloads the specs at a pinned commit (sha256-verified tarball, go.sum-style), builds the app, starts a temporary server and runs the chosen suite against it:

# Hurl (requires https://hurl.dev)
bash ./scripts/run-spec-tests.sh hurl

# Bruno (requires node/npx or bun)
bash ./scripts/run-spec-tests.sh bruno

Both suites run in CI (hurl-api-test and bruno-api-test jobs) and are the authoritative compliance check. (They replace the retired upstream Postman/Newman collection, which asserted a strict subset of the same behavior.)

To bump the spec version, update SPECS_REF_DEFAULT (upstream commit) and SPECS_SHA256_DEFAULT (tarball checksum) in scripts/run-spec-tests.sh. To try a different version ad hoc: SPECS_REF=main bash ./scripts/run-spec-tests.sh hurl (checksum verification is skipped unless you also pass SPECS_SHA256). A weekly spec-drift workflow runs the suite against upstream main so we notice when the spec moves without blocking PRs. or

go test ./... -cover

or

go test -v ./... -cover

depending on whether you want to see test coverage and how verbose the output you want.

• More elegance config
• ProtoBuf support
• Code structure optimize (I think some place can use interface)
• Continuous integration (done)

Current test coverage (2026):

• Total: 89.2%
• articles: 92.1%
• users: 99.5%
• common: 85.7%

Run coverage report:

go test -coverprofile=coverage.out ./...
go tool cover -func=coverage.out