What are the use(s) for tags in Go?

A tag for a field allows you to attach meta-information to the field which can be acquired using reflection. Usually it is used to provide transformation info on how a struct field is encoded to or decoded from another format (or stored/retrieved from a database), but you can use it to store whatever meta-info you want to, either intended for another package or for your own use.

Consider:

type User struct {
    Name  string `mytag:"MyName"`
    Email string `mytag:"MyEmail"`
}

u := User{"Bob", "bob@mycompany.com"}
t := reflect.TypeOf(u)

for _, fieldName := range []string{"Name", "Email"} {
    field, found := t.FieldByName(fieldName)
    if !found {
        continue
    }
    fmt.Printf("\nField: User.%s\n", fieldName)
    fmt.Printf("\tWhole tag value : %q\n", field.Tag)
    fmt.Printf("\tValue of 'mytag': %q\n", field.Tag.Get("mytag"))
}

Output:

Field: User.Name
    Whole tag value : "mytag:\"MyName\""
    Value of 'mytag': "MyName"

Field: User.Email
    Whole tag value : "mytag:\"MyEmail\""
    Value of 'mytag': "MyEmail"