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))
}
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
2021/03/19 19:55:17 /?bar=1
2021/03/19 19:55:17 /?bar=1 17.395µs
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)
})
}
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
2021/03/19 20:39:12 /?bar=1
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
}
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)
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})
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})
}
With all that code, I can exchange the middleware in real-time.
First a request
$ curl 0.0.0.0:8080?bar=1
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
Changing the middleware
$ curl -d '{"option": "no_verbose"}' 0.0.0.0:8080/config
A new request
$ curl 0.0.0.0:8080?bar=1
To get a less verbose log, it was generated by noVerboseMiddleware.
2021/03/19 20:51:43 /?bar=1
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))
}
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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