Introduction
Go has become the language of choice for high-performance backend systems. Its concurrency model, minimal runtime overhead, and straightforward tooling make it ideal for building APIs that need to handle thousands of requests per second.
Key Patterns
Connection Pooling
Always use connection pools for your database and external service connections. The standard database/sql package provides this out of the box.
db, err := sql.Open("postgres", dsn)
db.SetMaxOpenConns(25)
db.SetMaxIdleConns(25)
db.SetConnMaxLifetime(5 * time.Minute)
Context Propagation
Passing context throughout your request chain enables proper cancellation and timeout handling.
func GetUser(ctx context.Context, id int) (*User, error) {
return db.QueryRowContext(ctx, "SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = $1", id).Scan(&user)
}
Profiling
Use Go's built-in pprof tool to identify bottlenecks before optimizing.
Conclusion
By following these patterns, you can build Go APIs that comfortably handle millions of requests per day.