Views

Everything you render in Gova is a View. The interface is deliberately small:

type View interface {
	viewNode() *viewNode
}

viewNode is an internal tagged union that every widget constructor returns. You do not construct one directly; instead you call functions like Text, Button, VStack, or Scaffold, each of which returns a *viewNode. The pointer also satisfies View, so you can pass it anywhere a View is expected.

Modifiers return the same node

Every modifier method has the signature func (n *viewNode) X(...) *viewNode and returns the receiver so chains are possible:

gova.Text("Hello").
    Font(gova.Title).
    Bold().
    Color(gova.Accent).
    Padding(gova.SpaceMD)

Modifiers mutate the underlying node rather than allocating a new one. The side effect is that the *viewNode is not safe to mutate from multiple goroutines; build your view tree on the render goroutine only.

Anything a constructor accepts is a "viewable argument"

Layout constructors such as VStack, HStack, ZStack, ScrollView, Group, Scaffold, and list helpers accept any so they can take three different shapes of input:

• A View (the usual case: any *viewNode).
• A Viewable struct value with a Body method.
• nil, which is silently filtered out.

Anything else panics at the call site with a clear message. This is the only "magic" in the view tree; see Design philosophy for why.

Giving a node a stable key

Lists identify children by key to avoid tearing when items are added or removed. Key attaches a key to any node:

gova.Text(name).Key(user.ID)

Most of the time you do not call Key yourself. List, ListOf, and ForEach set the key for you based on the key function or the auto-resolved ID field.