Data-driven Middleware

Ring defines middleware as a function of type handler & args => request => response. It's relatively easy to understand and enables good performance. Downside is that the middleware-chain is just a opaque function, making things like debugging and composition hard. It's too easy to apply the middleware in wrong order.

Reitit defines middleware as data:

Middleware can be defined as first-class data entries
Middleware can be defined as a duct-style vector (of middleware)
Middleware can be optimized & compiled againt an endpoint
Middleware chain can be transformed by the router

Middleware as data

All values in the :middleware vector in the route data are coerced into reitit.ring.middleware/Middleware Records with using the reitit.ring.middleware/IntoMiddleware Protocol. By default, functions, maps and Middleware records are allowed.

Records can have arbitrary keys, but the following keys have a special purpose:

key	description
`:name`	Name of the middleware as a qualified keyword (optional)
`:wrap`	The actual middleware function of `handler & args => request => response`
`:gen-wrap`	Middleware function generation function, see compiling middleware.

Middleware Records are accessible in their raw form in the compiled route results, thus available for inventories, creating api-docs etc.

For the actual request processing, the Records are unwrapped into normal functions and composed into a middleware function chain, yielding zero runtime penalty.

Creating Middleware

The following produce identical middleware runtime function.

Function

(defn wrap [handler id]
  (fn [request]
    (handler (update request ::acc (fnil conj []) id))))

Record

(require '[reitit.ring.middleware :as middleware])

(def wrap2
  (middleware/create
    {:name ::wrap2
     :description "Middleware that does things."
     :wrap wrap}))

Map

(def wrap3
  {:name ::wrap3
   :description "Middleware that does things."
   :wrap wrap})

Using Middleware

:middleware is merged to endpoints by the router.

(require '[reitit.ring :as ring])

(defn handler [{:keys [::acc]}]
  {:status 200, :body (conj acc :handler)})

(def app
  (ring/ring-handler
    (ring/router
      ["/api" {:middleware [[wrap 1] [wrap2 2]]}
       ["/ping" {:get {:middleware [[wrap3 3]]
                       :handler handler}}]])))

All the middleware are applied correctly:

(app {:request-method :get, :uri "/api/ping"})
; {:status 200, :body [1 2 3 :handler]}

Compiling middleware

Middleware can be optimized against an endpoint using middleware compilation.

Transforming the middleware chain

There is an extra option in ring-router (actually, in the undelaying middleware-router): :reitit.ring.middleware/transform to transform the middleware chain per endpoint. It sees the vector of compiled middleware and should return a new vector of middleware.

Adding debug middleware between all other middleware

(def app
  (ring/ring-handler
    (ring/router
      ["/api" {:middleware [[wrap 1] [wrap2 2]]}
       ["/ping" {:get {:middleware [[wrap3 3]]
                       :handler handler}}]]
      {::middleware/transform #(interleave % (repeat [wrap :debug]))})))

(app {:request-method :get, :uri "/api/ping"})
; {:status 200, :body [1 :debug 2 :debug 3 :debug :handler]}

Reversing the middleware chain

(def app
  (ring/ring-handler
    (ring/router
      ["/api" {:middleware [[wrap 1] [wrap2 2]]}
       ["/ping" {:get {:middleware [[wrap3 3]]
                       :handler handler}}]]
      {::middleware/transform reverse)})))

(app {:request-method :get, :uri "/api/ping"})
; {:status 200, :body [3 2 1 :handler]}

Roadmap for middleware

Some things bubblin' under:

Re-package all useful middleware into (optimized) data-driven Middleware
- just package or a new community-repo with rehosting stuffm?
Support Keyword expansion into Middleware, enabling external Middleware Registries (duct/integrant/macchiato -style)
Support Middleware dependency resolution with new keys :requires and :provides. Values are set of top-level keys of the request. e.g.
- InjectUserIntoRequestMiddleware requires #{:session} and provides #{:user}
- AuthorizationMiddleware requires #{:user}
Support partial s/keys route data specs with Middleware (and Router). Merged together to define sound spec for the route data and/or route data for a given route.
- e.g. AuthrorizationMiddleware has a spec defining :roles key (a set of keywords)
- Documentation for the route data
- Route data is validated against the spec:
  - Complain of keywords that are not handled by anything
  - Propose fixes for typos (Figwheel-style)

Ideas welcome & see issues for details.

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