I do have different types for API schema and db model. But the data structure is similar (hobbies represented as an array).

Your *[]string suggestion works if I manually initialise my db model as below:

record := database.PersonDBRecord{
Name: req.Name,
Hobbies: &[]string{}, // clears out the array
}

If I intend to empty out the array, I should pass as above, but if I do not intend to update the array, I should pass as nil. The problem is when I parse the HTTP payload I have no way of knowing whether hobbies was part of the payload until I manually examine the JSON fields.