Unmarshaling Into an Interface{} and Then Performing Type Assertion

The default types that the json package Unmarshals into are shown in the Unmarshal function documentation

bool, for JSON booleans
float64, for JSON numbers
string, for JSON strings
[]interface{}, for JSON arrays
map[string]interface{}, for JSON objects
nil for JSON null

Since you’re unmarshaling into an interface{}, the returned types will only be from that set. The json package doesn’t know about Something1 and Something2. You either need to convert from the map[string]interface{} that the json object is being unmarshaled into, or unmarshal directly into the struct type you want.

If you don’t want to do unpack the data from a generic interface, or somehow tag the data so you know what type to expect, you could iteratively take the json and try to unmarshal it into each type you want.

You can even pack those into a wrapper struct to do the unmarshaling for you:

type Something1 struct {
    Thing      string `json:"thing"`
    OtherThing int64  `json:"other_thing"`
}

type Something2 struct {
    Croc  int  `json:"croc"`
    Odile bool `json:"odile"`
}

type Unpacker struct {
    Data       interface{}
}

func (u *Unpacker) UnmarshalJSON(b []byte) error {
    smth1 := &Something1{}
    err := json.Unmarshal(b, smth1)

    // no error, but we also need to make sure we unmarshaled something
    if err == nil && smth1.Thing != "" {
        u.Data = smth1
        return nil
    }

    // abort if we have an error other than the wrong type
    if _, ok := err.(*json.UnmarshalTypeError); err != nil && !ok {
        return err
    }

    smth2 := &Something2{}
    err = json.Unmarshal(b, smth2)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }

    u.Data = smth2
    return nil
}

http://play.golang.org/p/Trwd6IShDW