Middleware¶

Middleware in CakePHP¶

CakePHP provides several middleware to handle common tasks in web applications:

• Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware traps exceptions from the wrapped middleware and renders an error page using the Error & Exception Handling Exception handler.

• Cake\Routing\AssetMiddleware checks whether the request is referring to a theme or plugin asset file, such as a CSS, JavaScript or image file stored in either a plugin’s webroot folder or the corresponding one for a Theme.

• Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware uses the Router to parse the incoming URL and assign routing parameters to the request.

• Cake\I18n\Middleware\LocaleSelectorMiddleware enables automatic language switching from the Accept-Language header sent by the browser.

• Cake\Http\Middleware\EncryptedCookieMiddleware gives you the ability to manipulate encrypted cookies in case you need to manipulate cookie with obfuscated data.

• Cake\Http\Middleware\BodyParserMiddleware allows you to decode JSON, XML and other encoded request bodies based on Content-Type header.

• CakeHttpMiddlewareHttpsEnforcerMiddleware requires HTTPS to be used.

• CakeHttpMiddlewareCsrfProtectionMiddleware adds double-submit cookie based CSRF protection to your application.

• CakeHttpMiddlewareSessionCsrfProtectionMiddleware adds session based CSRF protection to your application.

• CakeHttpMiddlewareCspMiddleware makes it simpler to add Content-Security-Policy headers to your application.

• CakeHttpMiddlewareSecurityHeadersMiddleware makes it possible to add security related headers like X-Frame-Options to responses.

Using Middleware¶

Middleware can be applied to your application globally, to individual routing scopes, or to specific controllers.

To apply middleware to all requests, use the middleware method of your App\Application class. Your application’s middleware hook method will be called at the beginning of the request process, you can use the MiddlewareQueue object to attach middleware:

namespace App;

use Cake\Http\BaseApplication;
use Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue;
use Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware;

class Application extends BaseApplication
{
    public function middleware(MiddlewareQueue $middlewareQueue): MiddlewareQueue
    {
        // Bind the error handler into the middleware queue.
        $middlewareQueue->add(new ErrorHandlerMiddleware());
        return $middlewareQueue;
    }
}

In addition to adding to the end of the MiddlewareQueue you can do a variety of operations:

$layer = new \App\Middleware\CustomMiddleware;

// Added middleware will be last in line.
$middlewareQueue->add($layer);

// Prepended middleware will be first in line.
$middlewareQueue->prepend($layer);

// Insert in a specific slot. If the slot is out of
// bounds, it will be added to the end.
$middlewareQueue->insertAt(2, $layer);

// Insert before another middleware.
// If the named class cannot be found,
// an exception will be raised.
$middlewareQueue->insertBefore(
    'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware',
    $layer
);

// Insert after another middleware.
// If the named class cannot be found, the
// middleware will added to the end.
$middlewareQueue->insertAfter(
    'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware',
    $layer
);

If your middleware is only applicable to a subset of routes or individual controllers you can use Route scoped middleware, or Controller middleware.

// in plugins/ContactManager/src/Plugin.php
namespace ContactManager;

use Cake\Core\BasePlugin;
use Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue;
use ContactManager\Middleware\ContactManagerContextMiddleware;

class Plugin extends BasePlugin
{
    public function middleware(MiddlewareQueue $middlewareQueue): MiddlewareQueue
    {
        $middlewareQueue->add(new ContactManagerContextMiddleware());

        return $middlewareQueue;
    }
}

Creating Middleware¶

Middleware can either be implemented as anonymous functions (Closures), or classes which extend Psr\Http\Server\MiddlewareInterface. While Closures are suitable for smaller tasks they make testing harder, and can create a complicated Application class. Middleware classes in CakePHP have a few conventions:

• Middleware class files should be put in src/Middleware. For example: src/Middleware/CorsMiddleware.php

• Middleware classes should be suffixed with Middleware. For example: LinkMiddleware.

• Middleware must implement Psr\Http\Server\MiddlewareInterface.

Middleware can return a response either by calling $handler->handle() or by creating their own response. We can see both options in our simple middleware:

// In src/Middleware/TrackingCookieMiddleware.php
namespace App\Middleware;

use Cake\Http\Cookie\Cookie;
use Cake\I18n\Time;
use Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface;
use Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface;
use Psr\Http\Server\RequestHandlerInterface;
use Psr\Http\Server\MiddlewareInterface;

class TrackingCookieMiddleware implements MiddlewareInterface
{
    public function process(
        ServerRequestInterface $request,
        RequestHandlerInterface $handler
    ): ResponseInterface
    {
        // Calling $handler->handle() delegates control to the *next* middleware
        // In your application's queue.
        $response = $handler->handle($request);

        if (!$request->getCookie('landing_page')) {
            $expiry = new Time('+ 1 year');
            $response = $response->withCookie(new Cookie(
                'landing_page',
                $request->getRequestTarget(),
                $expiry
            ));
        }

        return $response;
    }
}

Now that we’ve made a very simple middleware, let’s attach it to our application:

// In src/Application.php
namespace App;

use App\Middleware\TrackingCookieMiddleware;
use Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue;

class Application
{
    public function middleware(MiddlewareQueue $middlewareQueue): MiddlewareQueue
    {
        // Add your simple middleware onto the queue
        $middlewareQueue->add(new TrackingCookieMiddleware());

        // Add some more middleware onto the queue

        return $middlewareQueue;
    }
}

Routing Middleware¶

Routing middleware is responsible for applying your application’s routes and resolving the plugin, controller, and action a request is going to. It can cache the route collection used in your application to increase startup time. To enable cached routes, provide the desired cache configuration as a parameter:

// In Application.php
public function middleware(MiddlewareQueue $middlewareQueue): MiddlewareQueue
{
    // ...
    $middlewareQueue->add(new RoutingMiddleware($this, 'routing'));
}

The above would use the routing cache engine to store the generated route collection.

Encrypted Cookie Middleware¶

If your application has cookies that contain data you want to obfuscate and protect against user tampering, you can use CakePHP’s encrypted cookie middleware to transparently encrypt and decrypt cookie data via middleware. Cookie data is encrypted with via OpenSSL using AES:

use Cake\Http\Middleware\EncryptedCookieMiddleware;

$cookies = new EncryptedCookieMiddleware(
    // Names of cookies to protect
    ['secrets', 'protected'],
    Configure::read('Security.cookieKey')
);

$middlewareQueue->add($cookies);

The encryption algorithms and padding style used by the cookie middleware are backwards compatible with CookieComponent from earlier versions of CakePHP.

Body Parser Middleware¶

If your application accepts JSON, XML or other encoded request bodies, the BodyParserMiddleware will let you decode those requests into an array that is available via $request->getParsedData() and $request->getData(). By default only json bodies will be parsed, but XML parsing can be enabled with an option. You can also define your own parsers:

use Cake\Http\Middleware\BodyParserMiddleware;

// only JSON will be parsed.
$bodies = new BodyParserMiddleware();

// Enable XML parsing
$bodies = new BodyParserMiddleware(['xml' => true]);

// Disable JSON parsing
$bodies = new BodyParserMiddleware(['json' => false]);

// Add your own parser matching content-type header values
// to the callable that can parse them.
$bodies = new BodyParserMiddleware();
$bodies->addParser(['text/csv'], function ($body, $request) {
    // Use a CSV parsing library.
    return Csv::parse($body);
});