How to do it...

These steps cover writing and running your application:

1. From your terminal/console application, create a new directory called chapter1/tempfiles.
2. Navigate to this directory.
3. Copy tests from https://github.com/agtorre/go-cookbook/tree/master/chapter1/tempfiles, or use this as an exercise to write some of your own code!
4. Create a file called temp_files.go with the following contents:

        package tempfiles
        
        import (
                "fmt"
                "io/ioutil"
                "os"
        )
        
        // WorkWithTemp will give some basic patterns for working
        // with temporary files and directories
        func WorkWithTemp() error {
                // If you need a temporary place to store files with 
                // the same name ie. template1-10.html a temp directory 
                //  is a good way to approach it, the first argument 
                // being blank means it will use create the directory                
                // in the location returned by 
                // os.TempDir()
                t, err := ioutil.TempDir("", "tmp")
                if err != nil {
                        return err
                }
        
                // This will delete everything inside the temp file 
                // when this function exits if you want to do this 
                //  later, be sure to return the directory name to the 
                // calling function
                defer os.RemoveAll(t)
        
                // the directory must exist to create the tempfile
                // created. t is an *os.File object.
                tf, err := ioutil.TempFile(t, "tmp")
                if err != nil {
                        return err
                }
        
                fmt.Println(tf.Name())
        
                // normally we'd delete the temporary file here, but 
                // because we're placing it in a temp directory, it 
                // gets cleaned up by the earlier defer

                return nil
        }

1. Create a new directory named example.
2. Navigate to example.
3. Create a main.go file with the following contents and ensure that you modify the tempfiles imported to use the path you set up in step 2:

        package main
        
        import "github.com/agtorre/go-cookbook/chapter1/tempfiles"
        
        func main() {
                if err := tempfiles.WorkWithTemp(); err != nil {
                        panic(err)
                }
        }

1. Run go run main.go.
2. You may also run these:

      go build
     ./example

You should see (with a different path) the following output:

        $ go run main.go 
        /var/folders/kd/ygq5l_0d1xq1lzk_c7htft900000gn/T
        /tmp764135258/tmp588787953

1. If you copied or wrote your own tests, go up one directory and run go test, and ensure all tests pass.