Golang Http Middleware

Http Middleware

Http Middleware is a shared functionality, using that we can log every request, gzip every response and check a cache before doing some heavy processing. Http Middleware has a single responsibility; we can plug it in our app at the interface level, it doesn’t affect our coding style like another layer in our request handling cycle. It is a pluggable and self-contained code, if we really want middleware we can plug it or if don’t want just remove it.

Using middleware in Golang is very simple, we have to use middleware between a ServeMux and application handlers. The Http Middleware function accepts a handler as a parameter and returns a handler so that we can directly register the Middleware function with the ServeMux.

Middleware Chaining

In Golang, we can create handler chain by nested middleware functions inside another function. We can share values and also pass errors from one handler to another using middleware chaining.

This is an example of middleware chaining; we are passing the handler to “middlewareOne” as a variable, then transfer the control to the next
“middlewareTwo” and then finally “loggingHandler”. This is necessary to know the control flow of middleware handlers, chain with other middleware handlers.

In Golang we can use Http Middleware for some specific handlers, no need to use it for all handlers. There are some third-party packages offers such kind of facilities.

Third-Party Middleware                                   

In Golang, we can use third-party package middleware instead of using our own middleware all the time. Well known third-party packages are Gorilla’s package and Negroni package.

The Gorilla package has collection handler for use with Golang’s net/http package. It mainly offers handler for logging, compressing http request and responses, validating content types.

Negroni provides an idiomatic approach to use Http Middleware in Golang. It supports to use net/http handlers, and also offers a way to handle Http Middleware. Negroni package offers middleware functions for logging handlers and to use the middleware functions some specific routes.

Conclusion

The Http Middleware is one of the advantage in Golang, by using this we can log each http request, gzip all responses and also we can check the cache before doing some heavy processing. The flow control of middleware handler is very useful and effective, also we can use middleware functions for specific routes.

Gp