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JuanPablo
JuanPablo

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Changing the middleware behavior with mux

TL;DR: You can change the behavior of a middleware exchanging it for another previously stored.

Probably you have used gorilla/mux.

Something that I like about mux is the possibility to add middlewares to it. You can find the description and some examples of that in the repository.

Here a middleware example based on the documentation.

package main

import (
    "encoding/json"
    "log"
    "net/http"
    "time"

    "github.com/gorilla/mux"
)

func loggingMiddleware(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        log.Println(r.RequestURI)

        defer func(startedAt time.Time) {
            log.Println(r.RequestURI, time.Since(startedAt))
        }(time.Now())

        next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
    })
}

func home(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(map[string]bool{"ok": true})
}

func main() {
    r := mux.NewRouter()
    r.HandleFunc("/", home)
    r.Use(loggingMiddleware)
    log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8080", r))
}
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In that example, every request will pass through the middleware and it will show the request's URI and the request's time duration in the logs.

$ curl 0.0.0.0:8080?bar=1
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2021/03/19 19:55:17 /?bar=1
2021/03/19 19:55:17 /?bar=1 17.395µs
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Thanks to the middleware loggingMiddleware, you can know which requests are calling your service.

Sometimes I have needed to change the behavior to middlewares similar to the previous one. For example, do more or fewer actions. To try to explain that idea I will show another simpler middleware.

func noVerboseMiddleware(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        log.Println(r.RequestURI)
        next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
    })
}
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The middleware noVerboseMiddleware shows less information, it shows the URI only once, at the beginning of the request, without the second log line with the request's time duration.

$ curl 0.0.0.0:8080?bar=1
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2021/03/19 20:39:12 /?bar=1
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Similar to the previous one but less verbose.

I would like to exchange the behavior of them, without rebuilding the code or restart the service. For that, I will create a struct to store a map of middleware. It will give us the possibility to exchange them.

type statefulMiddleware struct {
    current     func(http.Handler) http.Handler
    middlewares map[string]func(http.Handler) http.Handler
}

func (s *statefulMiddleware) update(nextName string) error {
    next, ok := s.middlewares[nextName]
    if !ok {
        return errors.New(invalidName)
    }

    s.current = next

    return nil
}

func (s *statefulMiddleware) main(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return s.current(next)
}

func newStatefulMiddleware(first string, middlewares map[string]func(http.Handler) http.Handler) (*statefulMiddleware, error) {
    current, ok := middlewares[first]
    if !ok {
        return nil, errors.New(invalidName)
    }

    stateful := statefulMiddleware{current: current, middlewares: middlewares}
    return &stateful, nil
}
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The function update exchanges the middlewares based on their name.

The function main will be used by mux as a normal middleware.

r.Use(s.middleware.main)
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The function newStatefulMiddleware creates the middleware with a map of middlewares with their names.

    stateful, _ := newStatefulMiddleware(
        "no_verbose",
        map[string]func(http.Handler) http.Handler{
            "no_verbose": noVerboseMiddleware,
            "verbose":    loggingMiddleware})
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Finally, a new handler in the server to choose which middleware I prefer. It will change the middleware base on a JSON message.

func (s *service) config(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    options := map[string]string{}

    err := json.NewDecoder(r.Body).Decode(&options)
    if err != nil {
        http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusBadRequest)
        return
    }

    option, ok := options["option"]
    if !ok {
        http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusBadRequest)
        return
    }

    err = s.middleware.update(option)
    if err != nil {
        http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusBadRequest)
        return
    }

    json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(map[string]bool{"changed": true})
}
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With all that code, I can exchange the middleware in real-time.

First a request

$ curl 0.0.0.0:8080?bar=1
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To get a verbose log, it was generated by loggingMiddleware.

2021/03/19 20:49:41 /?bar=1
2021/03/19 20:49:41 /?bar=1 12.016µs
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Changing the middleware

$ curl -d '{"option": "no_verbose"}' 0.0.0.0:8080/config
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A new request

$ curl 0.0.0.0:8080?bar=1
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To get a less verbose log, it was generated by noVerboseMiddleware.

2021/03/19 20:51:43 /?bar=1
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All the code put together

package main

import (
    "encoding/json"
    "errors"
    "log"
    "net/http"
    "time"

    "github.com/gorilla/mux"
)

const invalidName = "invalid middleware name"

type statefulMiddleware struct {
    current     func(http.Handler) http.Handler
    middlewares map[string]func(http.Handler) http.Handler
}

func (s *statefulMiddleware) update(nextName string) error {
    next, ok := s.middlewares[nextName]
    if !ok {
        return errors.New(invalidName)
    }

    s.current = next

    return nil
}

func (s *statefulMiddleware) main(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return s.current(next)
}

func newStatefulMiddleware(first string, middlewares map[string]func(http.Handler) http.Handler) (*statefulMiddleware, error) {
    current, ok := middlewares[first]
    if !ok {
        return nil, errors.New(invalidName)
    }

    stateful := statefulMiddleware{current: current, middlewares: middlewares}
    return &stateful, nil
}

func noVerboseMiddleware(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        log.Println(r.RequestURI)
        next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
    })
}

// loggingMiddleware example from https://github.com/gorilla/mux#examples
func loggingMiddleware(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        log.Println(r.RequestURI)

        defer func(startedAt time.Time) {
            log.Println(r.RequestURI, time.Since(startedAt))
        }(time.Now())

        next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
    })
}

type service struct {
    middleware *statefulMiddleware
}

func (s *service) home(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(map[string]bool{"ok": true})
}

func (s *service) config(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    options := map[string]string{}

    err := json.NewDecoder(r.Body).Decode(&options)
    if err != nil {
        http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusBadRequest)
        return
    }

    option, ok := options["option"]
    if !ok {
        http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusBadRequest)
        return
    }

    err = s.middleware.update(option)
    if err != nil {
        http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusBadRequest)
        return
    }

    json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(map[string]bool{"changed": true})
}

func main() {
    stateful, _ := newStatefulMiddleware(
        "no_verbose",
        map[string]func(http.Handler) http.Handler{
            "no_verbose": noVerboseMiddleware,
            "verbose":    loggingMiddleware})

    s := service{stateful}

    r := mux.NewRouter()
    r.HandleFunc("/config", s.config)
    r.HandleFunc("/", s.home)
    r.Use(s.middleware.main)

    log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8080", r))
}
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The source is available in this repository https://github.com/juanpabloaj/stateful_middleware_example

Some disclaimers:

  • I didn't add some things like a mutex to protect the map, because I tried to reduce the number of lines of the example.
  • It example could be made with different levels of the log but it was the simplest example that I could create to explain the idea.

What do you think of this approach?

Do you have another way to change the behavior of middleware?

Any suggestions or commentaries are welcome.

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