Middleware

Actix' middleware system allows to add additional behavior to request/response processing. Middleware can hook into incoming request process and modify request or halt request processing and return response early. Also it can hook into response processing.

Typically middlewares are involved in the following actions:

Pre-process the Request
Post-process a Response
Modify application state
Access external services (redis, logging, sessions)

Middlewares are registered for each application and are executed in same order as registration order. In general, a middleware is a type that implements the Middleware trait. Each method in this trait has a default implementation. Each method can return a result immediately or a future object.

Here is an example of a simple middleware that adds request and response headers:

# extern crate http;
# extern crate actix_web;
use http::{header, HttpTryFrom};
use actix_web::*;
use actix_web::middleware::{Middleware, Started, Response};

struct Headers;  // <- Our middleware

/// Middleware implementation, middlewares are generic over application state,
/// so you can access state with `HttpRequest::state()` method.
impl<S> Middleware<S> for Headers {

    /// Method is called when request is ready. It may return
    /// future, which should resolve before next middleware get called.
    fn start(&self, req: &mut HttpRequest<S>) -> Result<Started> {
        req.headers_mut().insert(
            header::CONTENT_TYPE, header::HeaderValue::from_static("text/plain"));
        Ok(Started::Done)
    }

    /// Method is called when handler returns response,
    /// but before sending http message to peer.
    fn response(&self, req: &mut HttpRequest<S>, mut resp: HttpResponse) -> Result<Response> {
        resp.headers_mut().insert(
            header::HeaderName::try_from("X-VERSION").unwrap(),
            header::HeaderValue::from_static("0.2"));
        Ok(Response::Done(resp))
    }
}

fn main() {
    Application::new()
       .middleware(Headers)  // <- Register middleware, this method can be called multiple times
       .resource("/", |r| r.h(httpcodes::HttpOk));
}

Actix provides several useful middlewares, like logging, user sessions, etc.

Logging

Logging is implemented as a middleware. It is common to register a logging middleware as the first middleware for the application. Logging middleware has to be registered for each application. Logger middleware uses the standard log crate to log information. You should enable logger for actix_web package to see access log (env_logger or similar).

Usage

Create Logger middleware with the specified format. Default Logger can be created with default method, it uses the default format:

  %a %t "%r" %s %b "%{Referer}i" "%{User-Agent}i" %T

# extern crate actix_web;
extern crate env_logger;
use actix_web::Application;
use actix_web::middleware::Logger;

fn main() {
    std::env::set_var("RUST_LOG", "actix_web=info");
    env_logger::init();

    Application::new()
       .middleware(Logger::default())
       .middleware(Logger::new("%a %{User-Agent}i"))
       .finish();
}

Here is an example of the default logging format:

INFO:actix_web::middleware::logger: 127.0.0.1:59934 [02/Dec/2017:00:21:43 -0800] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 302 0 "-" "curl/7.54.0" 0.000397
INFO:actix_web::middleware::logger: 127.0.0.1:59947 [02/Dec/2017:00:22:40 -0800] "GET /index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0" 0.000646

Format

%% The percent sign

%a Remote IP-address (IP-address of proxy if using reverse proxy)

%t Time when the request was started to process

%P The process ID of the child that serviced the request

%r First line of request

%s Response status code

%b Size of response in bytes, including HTTP headers

%T Time taken to serve the request, in seconds with floating fraction in .06f format

%D Time taken to serve the request, in milliseconds

%{FOO}i request.headers['FOO']

%{FOO}o response.headers['FOO']

%{FOO}e os.environ['FOO']

Default headers

To set default response headers the DefaultHeaders middleware can be used. The DefaultHeaders middleware does not set the header if response headers already contain the specified header.

# extern crate actix_web;
use actix_web::*;

fn main() {
    let app = Application::new()
        .middleware(
            middleware::DefaultHeaders::build()
                .header("X-Version", "0.2")
                .finish())
        .resource("/test", |r| {
             r.method(Method::GET).f(|req| httpcodes::HttpOk);
             r.method(Method::HEAD).f(|req| httpcodes::HttpMethodNotAllowed);
        })
       .finish();
}

User sessions

Actix provides a general solution for session management. The Session storage middleware can be used with different backend types to store session data in different backends. By default only cookie session backend is implemented. Other backend implementations could be added later.

Cookie session backend uses signed cookies as session storage. Cookie session backend creates sessions which are limited to storing fewer than 4000 bytes of data (as the payload must fit into a single cookie). Internal server error is generated if session contains more than 4000 bytes.

You need to pass a random value to the constructor of CookieSessionBackend. This is private key for cookie session. When this value is changed, all session data is lost. Note that whatever you write into your session is visible by the user (but not modifiable).

In general case, you create Session storage middleware and initializes it with specific backend implementation, like CookieSessionBackend. To access session data HttpRequest::session() has to be used. This method returns a Session object, which allows to get or set session data.

# extern crate actix;
# extern crate actix_web;
use actix_web::*;
use actix_web::middleware::{RequestSession, SessionStorage, CookieSessionBackend};

fn index(mut req: HttpRequest) -> Result<&'static str> {
    // access session data
    if let Some(count) = req.session().get::<i32>("counter")? {
        println!("SESSION value: {}", count);
        req.session().set("counter", count+1)?;
    } else {
        req.session().set("counter", 1)?;
    }

    Ok("Welcome!")
}

fn main() {
#   let sys = actix::System::new("basic-example");
    HttpServer::new(
        || Application::new()
            .middleware(SessionStorage::new(          // <- create session middleware
                CookieSessionBackend::build(&[0; 32]) // <- create cookie session backend
                    .secure(false)
                    .finish()
            )))
        .bind("127.0.0.1:59880").unwrap()
        .start();
#     actix::Arbiter::system().do_send(actix::msgs::SystemExit(0));
#     let _ = sys.run();
}

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