How to Read Struct Tags with Reflection in Go

Use the reflect package to get the Struct type of your struct, then call Field(i).Tag on the desired field index to retrieve the tag string.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"reflect"
)

type User struct {
	Name string `json:"name"`
	Age  int    `json:"age"`
}

func main() {
	t := reflect.TypeOf(User{})
	field, _ := t.FieldByName("Name")
	tag := field.Tag.Get("json")
	fmt.Println(tag) // Output: name
}

Struct tags are metadata attached to struct fields that tell programs how to handle that data, like naming a field for JSON output. Reflection lets your code inspect these tags at runtime without hardcoding field names. Think of it like reading the labels on boxes in a warehouse to know how to pack them, rather than knowing the contents by memory.