GoForms

A form is two files

The split is the one WinForms makes between Form1.Designer.cs and Form1.cs. The designer writes the first file only; the second is yours and is never rewritten.

type MainForm struct {
	*goforms.Form
	btnGreet *goforms.Button
	lblHello *goforms.Label
}

func (mf *MainForm) initializeComponent() {
	mf.lblHello = goforms.NewLabel("Hello, World!")
	mf.lblHello.SetBounds(20, 20, 200, 24)
	mf.AddControl(mf.lblHello)

	mf.btnGreet = goforms.NewButton("Greet")
	mf.btnGreet.SetBounds(20, 60, 100, 30)
	mf.btnGreet.Click.Handle(mf.btnGreet_Click)
	mf.AddControl(mf.btnGreet)
}

package mainform

import goforms "github.com/Go-Forms/GoForms"

// Written by the designer when Click was wired,
// and left alone from then on.
func (mf *MainForm) btnGreet_Click(
	sender any, e goforms.MouseEventArgs,
) {
	mf.lblHello.SetText("Clicked!")
}

What carries over from WinForms

• Absolute positioning. SetBounds(x, y, w, h) puts a control where you asked, measured against the size the form was designed at.
• Docking and anchoring. The same five dock styles and four anchor flags, applied in the same order: docked children carve up the client area, and what is left is the frame anchors are measured against.
• Multicast events. Event[T] works like a C# event. Handle(h) is +=, handlers run in the order they were added, and every signature is (sender any, e T).
• Dialogs. ShowDialog returns a DialogResult; message boxes, file pickers, folder and colour pickers report through callbacks, because the toolkit draws them on the UI goroutine and blocking it would deadlock.
• Containers. Panel, GroupBox, TabControl, SplitContainer, FlowLayoutPanel, TableLayoutPanel — each laying its children out the way its WinForms counterpart does.
• Themes. One Theme literal decides how the application looks; a field left unset keeps the toolkit's default rather than becoming a blank.

Golden-file tests pin the arranged geometry of docked and gridded layouts, so a change that moves a control by a pixel fails the build rather than shipping.

The designer

Opening a *-designer.go file in VS Code opens the canvas. Dragging a control writes its constructor call, its setters and its struct field; moving it rewrites the bounds; renaming it renames the field and every reference to it. Wiring an event generates a typed handler stub in the hand-written file, adds the import if it is missing, and rewrites the existing wiring instead of stacking a second one.

Every edit ends with a cleanup pass that removes what the edit made redundant — setters a later call overrides, repeated adds, duplicate field declarations — and the file is written back gofmt-formatted, so a designer edit and a hand edit produce the same file. Docked controls are drawn where they will really appear rather than at their stored coordinates.

It also scaffolds projects (empty, example, browser or Android), opens a project's theme as a visual editor, and builds and runs the project for the desktop, the browser or a connected phone.

Control catalogue

Every type below is in the designer's toolbox and understood by the code generator.

Install

Go 1.23 or newer, plus the C toolchain and OpenGL headers Fyne needs on your platform. On Debian or Ubuntu: gcc pkg-config libgl1-mesa-dev xorg-dev libxkbcommon-dev libwayland-dev. Windows, Linux and macOS are all supported and all tested on every commit.

go get github.com/Go-Forms/GoForms

# Or run the showcase, which is every control
# and layout in one application:
git clone git@github.com:Go-Forms/GoFormsShowcase.git
cd GoFormsShowcase && go run .

# From the latest release:
code --install-extension goforms-designer-0.10.2.vsix

# Then, in VS Code:
#   Ctrl+Shift+P -> "GoForms: Create New Project..."
# Open any *-designer.go file to get the canvas.

Repositories

• GoForms — the framework: controls, layout, events, dialogs, theming.
• GoFormsDesigner — the VS Code extension and the Go tool that parses and rewrites designer files.
• GoFormsShowcase — one form per subject, with a live event log, so anything on this page can be checked by running it.
• GoFormsDemo — a smaller sample, closer to a real project's first few forms.