Strapi Documentation

# Middlewares

The middlewares are functions which are composed and executed in a stack-like manner upon request. If you are not familiar with the middleware stack in Koa, we highly recommend you to read the Koa's documentation introduction.

Enable the middleware in environments settings

Path — config/environments/middleware.json.

{
  "responseTime": {
    "enabled": true
  }
}

Path — strapi/lib/middlewares/responseTime/index.js.

module.exports = strapi => {
  return {
    initialize: function(cb) {
      strapi.app.use(async (ctx, next) => {
        const start = Date.now();

        await next();

        const delta = Math.ceil(Date.now() - start);

        // Set X-Response-Time header
        ctx.set('X-Response-Time', delta + 'ms');
      });

      cb();
    },
  };
};
  • initialize (function): Called during the server boot. The callback cb needs to be called. Otherwise, the middleware won't be loaded into the stack.

The core of Strapi embraces a small list of middlewares for performances, security and great error handling.

  • boom
  • cors
  • cron
  • csp
  • csrf
  • favicon
  • gzip
  • hsts
  • ip
  • language
  • logger
  • p3p
  • parser
  • public
  • responses
  • responseTime
  • router
  • session
  • xframe
  • xss

TIP

The following middlewares cannot be disabled: responses, router, logger and boom.

# Structure

A middleware needs to follow the structure below:

/middleware
└─── lib
     - index.js
- LICENSE.md
- package.json
- README.md

The index.js is the entry point to your middleware. It should look like the example above.

# Custom middlewares

The framework allows the application to override the default middlewares and add new ones. You have to create a ./middlewares folder at the root of your project and put the middlewares into it.

/project
└─── admin
└─── api
└─── config
└─── middlewares
│   └─── responseTime // It will override the core default responseTime middleware
│        - index.js
│   └─── views // It will be added into the stack of middleware
│        - index.js
└─── plugins
└─── public
- favicon.ico
- package.json
- server.js

Every middleware will be injected into the Koa stack. To manage the load order, please refer to the Middleware order section.

# Load order

The middlewares are injected into the Koa stack asynchronously. Sometimes it happens that some of these middlewares need to be loaded in a specific order. To define a load order, we created a dedicated file located in ./config/middleware.json.

Path — ./config/middleware.json.

{
  "timeout": 100,
  "load": {
    "before": ["responseTime", "logger", "cors", "responses"],
    "order": [
      "Define the middlewares' load order by putting their name in this array in the right order"
    ],
    "after": ["parser", "router"]
  }
}
  • timeout: defines the maximum allowed milliseconds to load a middleware.
  • load:
    • before: array of middlewares that need to be loaded in the first place. The order of this array matters.
    • order: array of middlewares that need to be loaded in a specific order.
    • after: array of middlewares that need to be loaded at the end of the stack. The order of this array matters.

# Examples

Load a middleware at the very first place

Path — ./config/middleware.json

{
  "timeout": 100,
  "load": {
    "before": ["responseTime", "logger"],
    "order": [],
    "after": []
  }
}

The responseTime middleware will be loaded first. Immediately followed by the logger middleware. Then, the others middlewares will be loaded asynchronously.

Load a middleware after another one

Path — ./config/middleware.json.

{
  "timeout": 100,
  "load": {
    "before": [],
    "order": ["p3p", "gzip"],
    "after": []
  }
}

The gzip middleware will be loaded after the p3p middleware. All the others will be loaded asynchronously.

Load a middleware at the very end

Path — ./config/middleware.json.

  {
    "timeout": 100,
    "load": {
      "before": [
        ...
      ],
      "order": [],
      "after": [
        "parser",
        "router"
      ]
    }
  }

The router middleware will be loaded at the very end. The parser middleware will be loaded after all the others and just before the router middleware.

Complete example

For this example, we are going to imagine that we have 10 middlewares to load:

  • cors
  • cron
  • favicon
  • gzip
  • logger
  • p3p
  • parser
  • response
  • responseTime
  • router

We assume that we set the ./config/middleware.json file like this:

{
  "timeout": 100,
  "load": {
    "before": ["responseTime", "logger", "cors"],
    "order": ["p3p", "gzip"],
    "after": ["parser", "router"]
  }
}

Here is the loader order:

  1. responseTime (loaded at the very first place)
  2. logger
  3. cors
  4. favicon (position order not guarantee)
  5. p3p
  6. cron
  7. gzip (loaded after the p3p middlewares)
  8. response (position order not guarantee)
  9. parser
  10. router (loaded at the very end place)

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