How can I get custom type with reflect?

Question

The following data types are defined:

type Status int
type RealStatus Status

Is there a way to get from RealStatus type to Status type with reflection?

Answer 1

Yes, it's possible if you mean to get a Status value from a RealStatus value using reflection; you may use Value.Convert() for that, for example:

type Status int
type RealStatus Status

rs := RealStatus(1)

st := reflect.TypeOf(Status(0))

var i interface{}
i = reflect.ValueOf(rs).Convert(st).Interface()

fmt.Printf("%T %v", i, i)

This will output (try it on the Go Playground ):

main.Status 1

Note that you can only get an interface{} value from reflection, so to use it as a Status value, you still need a type assertion . Given that, you could just use a simple type conversion in the first place, like in this example:

rs := RealStatus(1)

var s Status
s = Status(rs)

fmt.Printf("%T %v", s, s)

Which outputs the same (try it on the Go Playground ), and it has the advantage that s has static type Status .

Answer 2

No, it is not possible to get one type from the other. The only relationship between RealStatus and Status types is that they share the same underlying type int .

It is possible to convert between values of those types as shown in the answer by @icza.