If you’re a beginner getting into Go, its mostly quite easy and straightforward. That is, until you get to channels.

At first, everything about channels seems confusing and unintuitive. The fact that not many other popular programming languages have a similar concept, means that channels is one concept that you have to spend some time learning them, if you’re starting your journey with Go.

At the end of this article, you should have all you need to understand how channels work in Go.

Visualizing Goroutines

To understand channels properly, it is essential to know how to visualize Goroutines first.

Let’s start with a simple Goroutine, that takes a number, multiplies it by two, and prints its value (Run this code):

package main import ( "fmt" "time" ) func main ( ) { n := 3 go multiplyByTwo ( n ) time . Sleep ( time . Second ) } func multiplyByTwo ( num int ) int { result := num * 2 fmt . Println ( result ) return result }

We can visualize this program as a set of two blocks: one being the main funciton, and the other being the multiplyByTwo goroutine.

The problems with this implementation (that can also be seen from the diagram), is that these two parts of our code are rather disconnected. As a consequence :

We cannot access the result of multiplyByTwo in the main function.

in the function. We have no way to know when the multiplyByTwo goroutine completes. As a result of this, we have to pause the main function by calling time.Sleep , which is a hacky solution at best.

Example #1 - Adding a channel to our goroutine

Let’s now look at some code that introduces how to make and use a channel in Go (Run this code):

package main import ( "fmt" ) func main ( ) { n := 3 out := make ( chan int ) go multiplyByTwo ( n , out ) fmt . Println ( <- out ) } func multiplyByTwo ( num int , out chan <- int ) { result := num * 2 out <- result }

A channel gives us a way to “connect” the different concurrent parts of our program. In this case, we can represent this connection between our two concurrent blocks of code visually :

Channels can be thought of as “pipes” or “arteries” that connect the different concrrent parts of our code.

Directionality

You can also observe that the connection is directional (that’s why theres an arrow, and not just a line). To explain this, take a look at the type definition of the out argument of the multiplyByTwo function :

out chan <- int

The chan<- declaration tells us that you can only put stuff into the channel, but not receive anything from it.

declaration tells us that you can only put stuff into the channel, but not receive anything from it. The int declaration tells us that the “stuff” you put into the channel can only be of the int datatype.

Although they look like separate parts, chan<- int can be thought of as one datatype, that describes a “send-only” channel of integers.

Similarly, an example of a “receive-only” channel declaration would look like:

out <- chan int

You can also declare a channel without giving directionality, which means it can send or recieve data :

out chan int

This is actually seen when we create the out channel in the main function :

out := make ( chan int )

The reason we had to make a bi-directional channel was because we were using it to send data from the multiplyByTwo function and receive that same data in the main function.

Blocking code

Statements that send or receive values from channels are blocking inside their own goroutine.

This means that when we try to print the value received (in the main function) :

fmt . Println ( <- out )

The <-out statement will block the code until some data is received on the out channel. It helps to then visualize this by splitting the main block into two parts : the part that runs until its time to wait for the channel to receive data, and the part that is run after.

The second part of main can only be run once data is received through the channel, which is why the green arrow connects to the second part.

The dotted arrow added here is to show that it is the main function that started the multiplyByTwo goroutine.

Example #2 - Two single directional channels

Example #1 can be implemented another way, by using 2 channels : one for sending data to the goroutine, and another for receiving the result (Run this code).

package main import ( "fmt" ) func main ( ) { n := 3 in := make ( chan int ) out := make ( chan int ) go multiplyByTwo ( in , out ) in <- n fmt . Println ( <- out ) } func multiplyByTwo ( in <- chan int , out chan <- int ) { fmt . Println ( "Initializing goroutine..." ) num := <- in result := num * 2 out <- result }

Now, in addition to main , multiplyByTwo is also divided into 2 parts: the part before and after the point where we wait on the in channel ( num := <- in )

Example #3 - Multiple concurrent goroutines

Now consider the case where we want to run multiplyByTwo concurrently 3 times (Run this code) :

package main import ( "fmt" ) func main ( ) { out := make ( chan int ) in := make ( chan int ) go multiplyByTwo ( in , out ) go multiplyByTwo ( in , out ) go multiplyByTwo ( in , out ) in <- 1 in <- 2 in <- 3 fmt . Println ( <- out ) fmt . Println ( <- out ) fmt . Println ( <- out ) } func multiplyByTwo ( in <- chan int , out chan <- int ) { fmt . Println ( "Initializing goroutine..." ) num := <- in result := num * 2 out <- result }

It is important to note that there is no guarantee as to which goroutine will accept which input, or which goroutine will return an output first. All the main function “knows”, is that it is sending some data into the in channel, and expects some data to be received on the out channel.

This can be slightly harder to visualize, but hang in there!

The multiple concurrent goroutines require a different visualization for channels. Here, we see a channel as a kind of “pool” of data (formally known as a buffer). For the purple channel ( in ), the main function puts in data, and one of the initialized goroutines receive the data. There is no information regarding which goroutine takes which data. This is the same for the green out channel going back into the main routine.

The main routine is now split into 4 parts, since 3 parts now correspond to the 3 times we have to wait ont he out channel (as described by the 3 fmt.Println(<-out) statements), and another part for the operations before the first fmt.Println(<-out) statement.

The multiplyByTwo goroutines on their own, look (and function) the same as before.

Going forward from here

A lot of the time, programs written in Go are highly confusing because of the concurrency and asynchronous nature of the code. Visualizing your code before you proceed to write it (or for that matter, visualizing someone else’s code before you modify it), can help a great deal and actually save you time in understanding.