Debugging App engine with golang -- There has to be a better way?

I hope this helps . In addition to GDB you can use Zeus. Also, take a look to comparison of IDEs for Google Go.

hop of those help? You're not using pointers throughout. Start off with a Registry of type:

type Registry []*Broker

I wish this helpful for you One way to both accept null values, and to not print anything if published_at is null, is to set PublishedAt field to a pointer value :

type Movie struct {
    Title       string    `json:"title"`
    PublishedAt *time.Time `json:"published_at"`
}

package main

import (
    "bytes"
    "encoding/json"
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

// check the full type of an error raised when Unmarshaling a json string
func main() {
    var test struct {
        Clock time.Time
    }
    buf := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"Clock":null}`)
    dec := json.NewDecoder(buf)

    // ask to decode an invalid null value into a flat time.Time field :
    err := dec.Decode(&test)

    // print the details of the returned error :
    fmt.Printf("%#v\n", err)
}

// Output :
&time.ParseError{Layout:"\"2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00\"", Value:"null", LayoutElem:"\"", ValueElem:"null", Message:""}

if terr, ok := err.(*time.ParseError); ok {
    // in the example : Movie has one single time.Time field ;
    // if a time.ParseError occured, it was while trying to read that field
    fmt.Println("Error when trying to read 'published_at' value", terr)

    // you can leave the field to its zero value,
    // or if you switched to a pointer field :
    m.PublishedAt = nil
}

if terr, ok := err.(*time.ParseError); ok {
    if m.ProducedAt.IsZero() {
        fmt.Println("Error when trying to read 'produced_at' value", terr)
    }

    if m.PublishedAt == zero {
        fmt.Println("Error when trying to read 'published_at' value", terr)
    }
}