Stack

Stack provides an easy way to chain your HTTP middleware and handlers together and to pass request-scoped context between them. It's essentially a context-aware version of Alice.

Skip to the example ›

Usage

Making a chain

Middleware chains are constructed with stack.New():

stack.New(middlewareOne, middlewareTwo, middlewareThree)

You can also store middleware chains as variables, and then Append() to them:

stdStack := stack.New(middlewareOne, middlewareTwo)
extStack := stdStack.Append(middlewareThree, middlewareFour)

Your middleware should have the signature func(*stack.Context, http.Handler) http.Handler. For example:

func middlewareOne(ctx *stack.Context, next http.Handler) http.Handler {
  return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    // do something middleware-ish, accessing ctx
    next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
  })
}

You can also use middleware with the signature func(http.Handler) http.Handler by adapting it with stack.Adapt(). For example, if you had the middleware:

func middlewareTwo(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
  return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    // do something else middleware-ish
    next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
  })
}

You can add it to a chain like this:

stack.New(middlewareOne, stack.Adapt(middlewareTwo), middlewareThree)

See the codes samples for real-life use of third-party middleware with Stack.

Adding an application handler

Application handlers should have the signature func(*stack.Context, http.ResponseWriter, *http.Request). You add them to the end of a middleware chain with the Then() method.

So an application handler like this:

func appHandler(ctx *stack.Context, w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
   // do something handler-ish, accessing ctx
}

Is added to the end of a middleware chain like this:

stack.New(middlewareOne, middlewareTwo).Then(appHandler)

For convenience ThenHandler() and ThenHandlerFunc() methods are also provided. These allow you to finish a chain with a standard http.Handler or http.HandlerFunc respectively.

For example, you could use a standard http.FileServer as the application handler:

fs :=  http.FileServer(http.Dir("./static/"))
http.Handle("/", stack.New(middlewareOne, middlewareTwo).ThenHandler(fs))

Once a chain is 'closed' with any of these methods it is converted into a HandlerChain object which satisfies the http.Handler interface, and can be used with the http.DefaultServeMux and many other routers.

Using context

Request-scoped data (or context) can be passed through the chain by storing it in stack.Context. This is implemented as a pointer to a map[string]interface{} and scoped to the goroutine executing the current HTTP request. Operations on stack.Context are protected by a mutex, so if you need to pass the context pointer to another goroutine (say for logging or completing a background process) it is safe for concurrent use.

Data is added with Context.Put(). The first parameter is a string (which acts as a key) and the second is the value you need to store. For example:

func middlewareOne(ctx *stack.Context, next http.Handler) http.Handler {
  return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    ctx.Put("token", "c9e452805dee5044ba520198628abcaa")
    next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
  })
}

You retrieve data with Context.Get(). Remember to type assert the returned value into the type you're expecting.

func appHandler(ctx *stack.Context, w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
  token, ok := ctx.Get("token").(string)
  if !ok {
    http.Error(w, http.StatusText(500), 500)
    return
  }
  fmt.Fprintf(w, "Token is: %s", token)
}

Note that Context.Get() will return nil if a key does not exist. If you need to tell the difference between a key having a nil value and it explicitly not existing, please check with Context.Exists().

Keys (and their values) can be deleted with Context.Delete().

Injecting context

It's possible to inject values into stack.Context during a request cycle but before the chain starts to be executed. This is useful if you need to inject parameters from a router into the context.

The Inject() function returns a new copy of the chain containing the injected context. You should make sure that you use this new copy – not the original – for subsequent processing.

Here's an example of a wrapper for injecting httprouter params into the context:

func InjectParams(hc stack.HandlerChain) httprouter.Handle {
  return func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request, ps httprouter.Params) {
    newHandlerChain := stack.Inject(hc, "params", ps)
    newHandlerChain.ServeHTTP(w, r)
  }
}

A full example is available in the code samples.

Example

package main

import (
  "net/http"
  "github.com/alexedwards/stack"
  "fmt"
)

func main() {
  stk := stack.New(token, stack.Adapt(language))

  http.Handle("/", stk.Then(final))

  http.ListenAndServe(":3000", nil)
}

func token(ctx *stack.Context, next http.Handler) http.Handler {
  return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    ctx.Put("token", "c9e452805dee5044ba520198628abcaa")
    next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
  })
}

func language(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
  return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    w.Header().Set("Content-Language", "en-gb")
    next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
  })
}

func final(ctx *stack.Context, w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
  token, ok := ctx.Get("token").(string)
  if !ok {
    http.Error(w, http.StatusText(500), 500)
    return
  }
  fmt.Fprintf(w, "Token is: %s", token)
}

Code samples

• Integrating with httprouter
• More to follow

TODO

• Add more code samples (using 3rd party middleware)
• Make a chain.Merge() method
• Mirror master in v1 branch (and mention gopkg.in in README)
• Add benchmarks