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Document how to create ASGI middlewares #1656

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274 changes: 274 additions & 0 deletions docs/middleware.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -232,6 +232,280 @@ around explicitly, rather than mutating the middleware instance.
- It's not possible to use `BackgroundTasks` with `BaseHTTPMiddleware`. Check [#1438](https://github.com/encode/starlette/issues/1438) for more details.
- Using `BaseHTTPMiddleware` will prevent changes to [`contextlib.ContextVar`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/contextvars.html#contextvars.ContextVar)s from propagating upwards. That is, if you set a value for a `ContextVar` in your endpoint and try to read it from a middleware you will find that the value is not the same value you set in your endpoint (see [this test](https://github.com/encode/starlette/blob/621abc747a6604825190b93467918a0ec6456a24/tests/middleware/test_base.py#L192-L223) for an example of this behavior).

## Pure ASGI Middleware

Thanks to how ASGI was designed, it is possible to implement middleware as a chain of ASGI applications, where each application calls into the next one.
Each element of the chain is an [`ASGI`](https://asgi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) application by itself, which per definition, is also a middleware.

This is also an alternative approach in case the limitations of `BaseHTTPMiddleware` are a problem.
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### Guiding principles

The most common way to create an ASGI middleware is with a class.

```python
class ASGIMiddleware:
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app

async def __call__(self, scope, receive, send):
await self.app(scope, receive, send)
```

The middleware above is the most basic ASGI middleware. It receives an ASGI application as an argument for its constructor, and implements the `async __call__` method. This method should accept `scope`, which contains information about the current connection, and `receive` and `send` which allow to exchange ASGI event messages with the ASGI server (learn more in the [ASGI specification](https://asgi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/specs/index.html)).

As an alternative for the class approach, you can also use a function:

```python
import functools

def asgi_middleware():
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def asgi_decorator(app):
@functools.wraps(app)
async def wrapped_app(scope, receive, send):
await app(scope, receive, send)
return wrapped_app
return asgi_decorator
```

!!! info
The function pattern is not commonly spread, but you can check a more advanced implementation of it on
[asgi-cors](https://github.com/simonw/asgi-cors/blob/10ef64bfcc6cd8d16f3014077f20a0fb8544ec39/asgi_cors.py).

#### `Scope` types

As we mentioned, the scope holds the information about the connection. There are three types of `scope`s:

- [`lifespan`](https://asgi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/specs/lifespan.html#scope) is a special type of scope that is used for the lifespan of the ASGI application.
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- [`http`](https://asgi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/specs/www.html#http-connection-scope) is a type of scope that is used for HTTP requests.
- [`websocket`](https://asgi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/specs/www.html#websocket-connection-scope) is a type of scope that is used for WebSocket connections.

If you want to create a middleware that only runs on HTTP requests, you'd write something like:

```python
class ASGIMiddleware:
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app

async def __call__(self, scope, receive, send):
if scope["type"] != "http":
return await self.app(scope, receive, send)

# Do something here!
await self.app(scope, receive, send)
```
In the example above, if the `scope` type is **not** `http`, meaning that is either `lifespan` or `websocket`, we'll directly call the `self.app`.

The same applies to other scopes.

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!!! tip
Middleware classes should be stateless -- see [Per-request state](#per-request-state) if you do need to store per-request state.

#### Wrapping `send` and `receive`

A common pattern, that you'll probably need to use is to wrap the `send` or `receive` callables.

For example, here's how we could write a middleware that logs the response status code, which we'd obtain
by wrapping the `send` with the `send_wrapper` callable:

```python
class LogStatusCodeMiddleware:
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app

async def __call__(self, scope, receive, send):
if scope["type"] != "http":
return await self.app(scope, receive, send)

status_code = 500

async def send_wrapper(message):
if message["type"] == "http.response.start":
status_code = message["status"]
await send(message)

await self.app(scope, receive, send_wrapper)

print("This is a primitive access log")
print(f"status = {status_code}")
```

!!! info
You can check a more advanced implementation of the same rationale on [asgi-logger](https://github.com/Kludex/asgi-logger/blob/main/asgi_logger/middleware.py).

#### Type annotations
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There are two ways of annotating a middleware: using Starlette itself or [`asgiref`](https://github.com/django/asgiref).

Using Starlette, you can do as:

```python
from starlette.types import ASGIApp, Message, Scope, Receive, Send


class ASGIMiddleware:
def __init__(self, app: ASGIApp) -> None:
self.app = app

async def __call__(self, scope: Scope, receive: Receive, send: Send) -> None:
if scope["type"] != "http":
return await self.app(scope, receive, send)

async def send_wrapper(message: Message) -> None:
# ... Do something
await send(message)

await self.app(scope, receive, send_wrapper)
```

Although this is easy, you may prefer to be more strict. In which case, you'd need to use `asgiref`:

```python
from asgiref.typing import ASGI3Application, Scope, ASGISendCallable
from asgiref.typing import ASGIReceiveEvent, ASGISendEvent


class ASGIMiddleware:
def __init__(self, app: ASGI3Application) -> None:
self.app = app

async def __call__(self, scope: Scope, receive: ASGIReceiveCallable, send: ASGISendCallable) -> None:
if scope["type"] == "http":
async def send_wrapper(message: ASGISendEvent) -> None:
await send(message)
return await self.app(scope, receive, send_wrapper)
await self.app(scope, receive, send)
```

!!! info
If you're curious about the `ASGI3Application` type on the snippet above, you can read more about ASGI versions on the [Legacy Applications section on the ASGI
documentation](https://asgi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/specs/main.html#legacy-applications).

### Reusing Starlette components

If you need to work with request or response data, you may find it more convenient to reuse Starlette data structures ([`Request`](requests.md#request), [`Headers`](requests.md#headers), [`QueryParams`](requests.md#query-parameters), [`URL`](requests.md#url), etc) rather than work with raw ASGI data. All these components can be built from the ASGI `scope`, `receive` and `send`, allowing you to work on pure ASGI middleware at a higher level of abstraction.

For example, we can create a `Request` object, and work with it.
```python
from starlette.requests import Request

class ASGIMiddleware:
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app

async def __call__(self, scope, receive, send):
if scope["type"] == "http":
request = Request(scope, receive, send)
# Do something here!
await self.app(scope, receive, send)
```

Or we might use `MutableHeaders` to change the response headers:

```python
from starlette.datastructures import MutableHeaders

class ExtraResponseHeadersMiddleware:
def __init__(self, app, headers):
self.app = app
self.headers = headers

async def __call__(self, scope, receive, send):
if scope["type"] != "http":
return await self.app(scope, receive, send)

async def wrapped_send(message):
if message["type"] == "http.response.start":
headers = MutableHeaders(scope=message)
for key, value in self.headers:
headers.append(key, value)
await send(message)

await self.app(scope, receive, wrapped_send)
```

### Per-request state

ASGI middleware classes should be stateless, as we typically don't want to leak state across requests.

The risk is low when defining wrappers inside `__call__`, as state would typically be defined as inline variables.

But if the middleware grows larger and more complex, you might be tempted to refactor wrappers as methods. Still, state should not be stored in the middleware instance. This means that the middleware should not have attributes that would change across requests or connections. If the middleware has an attribute, for example set in the `__init__()` method, nothing else should change it afterwards. Instead, if you need to manipulate per-request state, you may write a separate `Responder` class:

```python
from functools import partial

from starlette.datastructures import Headers

class TweakMiddleware:
"""
Make a change to the response body if 'X-Tweak' is
present in the response headers.
"""

async def __call_(self, scope, receive, send):
if scope["type"] != "http":
return await self.app(scope, receive, send)

responder = TweakResponder(self.app)
await responder(scope, receive, send)

class TweakResponder:
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app
self.should_tweak = False

async def __call__(self, scope, receive, send):
send = partial(self.maybe_send_with_tweaks, send=send)
await self.app(scope, receive, send)

async def maybe_send_with_tweaks(self, message, send):
if message["type"] == "http.response.start":
headers = Headers(raw=message["headers"])
self.should_tweak = headers.get("X-Tweak") == "1"
await send(message)
return

if message["type"] == "http.response.body":
if not self.should_tweak:
await send(message)
return

# Actually tweak the response body...
```

See also [`GZipMiddleware`](https://github.com/encode/starlette/blob/9ef1b91c9c043197da6c3f38aa153fd874b95527/starlette/middleware/gzip.py) for a full example of this pattern.

### Storing context in `scope`

As we know by now, the `scope` holds the information about the connection.

As per the ASGI specifications, any application can store custom information on the `scope`.
Have in mind that other components could also store data in the same `scope`, so it's important to use a key that has a low chance of being used by other things.

For example, if you are building an application called `super-app` you could have that as a prefix for any keys you put in the `scope`, and then you could have a key called `super-app-transaction-id`.

```python
from uuid import uuid4


class ASGIMiddleware:
def __init__(self, app):
self.app = app

async def __call__(self, scope, receive, send):
scope["super-app-transaction-id"] = uuid4()
await self.app(scope, receive, send)
```
On the example above, we stored a key called "super-app-transaction-id" in the scope. That can be used by the application itself, as the scope is forwarded to it.

!!! important
This documentation should be enough to have a good basis on how to create an ASGI middleware.
Nonetheless, there are great articles about the subject:

- [Introduction to ASGI: Emergence of an Async Python Web Ecosystem](https://florimond.dev/en/posts/2019/08/introduction-to-asgi-async-python-web/)
- [How to write ASGI middleware](https://pgjones.dev/blog/how-to-write-asgi-middleware-2021/)

## Using middleware in other frameworks

To wrap ASGI middleware around other ASGI applications, you should use the
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