Middleware Pattern

One of the most distinctive patterns in Node.js is definitely the Middleware pattern.

Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most confusing for the inexperienced, especially for developers coming from the enterprise programming world. The reason for the disorientation is probably connected to the traditional meaning of the term middleware, which in enterprise architecture jargon represents the various software suites that help to abstract lower-level mechanisms such as OS APIs, network communications, memory management, and so on, allowing the developer to focus only on the business case of the application. In this context, the term middleware recalls topics such as CORBA, enterprise service bus, Spring, JBoss, and WebSphere, but in its more generic meaning, it can also define any kind of software layer that acts as glue between lower-level services and the application (literally, the software in the middle).

Middleware in Express

Express popularized the term middleware in the Node.js world, binding it to a very specific design pattern. In Express, in fact, middleware represents a set of services, typically functions, that are organized in a pipeline and are responsible for processing incoming HTTP requests and relative responses.

Express is famous for being a very non-opinionated and minimalist web framework and the Middleware pattern is the main reason for that. Express middleware is, in fact, an effective strategy for allowing developers to easily create and distribute new features that can be easily added to an application, without the need to grow the minimalistic core of the framework.

An Express middleware has the following signature: