Schemas

While Go structs define the shape of your data, a Schema in goose defines the behavior, validation rules, hooks, and relationships of your data.

Creating a Schema

You can create an empty schema or one with explicit field definitions and options.

schema := goose.NewSchema(nil)

Schema Options

You can configure your schema using functional options:

schema := goose.NewSchema(
    nil,
    goose.WithTimestamps(true),
    goose.WithCollection("custom_users_collection"),
    goose.WithStrict(true),
)

Timestamps

WithTimestamps(true) tells goose to automatically manage createdAt and updatedAt fields when saving or updating documents.

Field Definitions

If you prefer defining rules in code rather than via struct tags, you can pass map[string]goose.FieldDef to NewSchema:

fields := map[string]goose.FieldDef{
    "email": {
        Type:     goose.String,
        Required: true,
        Unique:   true,
    },
}

schema := goose.NewSchema(fields)

FieldDef Properties

The FieldDef struct provides extensive configuration for each field:

• Required: Fails validation if the field is empty.
• Default: Sets a default value if missing.
• Unique: Ensures the value is unique across the collection.
• Ref: Specifies the target collection name for $lookup population.
• Min / Max: Validation bounds for strings or numbers.
• Validate: A custom goose.ValidatorFn.
• Select: Defaults to true; if false, the field is excluded from queries by default.