gorilla/mux
The Gorilla project has been archived, and is no longer under active maintainenance. You can read more here: https://github.com/gorilla#gorilla-toolkit
Package gorilla/mux
implements a request router and dispatcher for matching incoming requests to
their respective handler.
The name mux stands for "HTTP request multiplexer". Like the standard http.ServeMux
, mux.Router
matches incoming requests against a list of registered routes and calls a handler for the route that matches the URL or other conditions. The main features are:
- It implements the
http.Handler
interface so it is compatible with the standard http.ServeMux
. - Requests can be matched based on URL host, path, path prefix, schemes, header and query values, HTTP methods or using custom matchers.
- URL hosts, paths and query values can have variables with an optional regular expression.
- Registered URLs can be built, or "reversed", which helps maintaining references to resources.
- Routes can be used as subrouters: nested routes are only tested if the parent route matches. This is useful to define groups of routes that share common conditions like a host, a path prefix or other repeated attributes. As a bonus, this optimizes request matching.
Install
With a correctly configured Go toolchain:
go get -u github.com/gorilla/mux
Examples
Let's start registering a couple of URL paths and handlers:
func main() {
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/", HomeHandler)
r.HandleFunc("/products", ProductsHandler)
r.HandleFunc("/articles", ArticlesHandler)
http.Handle("/", r)
}
Here we register three routes mapping URL paths to handlers. This is equivalent to how http.HandleFunc()
works: if an incoming request URL matches one of the paths, the corresponding handler is called passing (http.ResponseWriter
, *http.Request
) as parameters.
Paths can have variables. They are defined using the format {name}
or {name:pattern}
. If a regular expression pattern is not defined, the matched variable will be anything until the next slash. For example:
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/products/{key}", ProductHandler)
r.HandleFunc("/articles/{category}/", ArticlesCategoryHandler)
r.HandleFunc("/articles/{category}/{id:[0-9]+}", ArticleHandler)
The names are used to create a map of route variables which can be retrieved calling mux.Vars()
:
func ArticlesCategoryHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
vars := mux.Vars(r)
w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
fmt.Fprintf(w, "Category: %v\n", vars["category"])
}
And this is all you need to know about the basic usage. More advanced options are explained below.
Matching Routes
Routes can also be restricted to a domain or subdomain. Just define a host pattern to be matched. They can also have variables:
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.Host("www.example.com")
r.Host("{subdomain:[a-z]+}.example.com")
There are several other matchers that can be added. To match path prefixes:
r.PathPrefix("/products/")
...or HTTP methods:
r.Methods("GET", "POST")
...or URL schemes:
r.Schemes("https")
...or header values:
r.Headers("X-Requested-With", "XMLHttpRequest")
...or query values:
r.Queries("key", "value")
...or to use a custom matcher function:
r.MatcherFunc(func(r *http.Request, rm *RouteMatch) bool {
return r.ProtoMajor == 0
})
...and finally, it is possible to combine several matchers in a single route:
r.HandleFunc("/products", ProductsHandler).
Host("www.example.com").
Methods("GET").
Schemes("http")
Routes are tested in the order they were added to the router. If two routes match, the first one wins:
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/specific", specificHandler)
r.PathPrefix("/").Handler(catchAllHandler)
Setting the same matching conditions again and again can be boring, so we have a way to group several routes that share the same requirements. We call it "subrouting".
For example, let's say we have several URLs that should only match when the host is www.example.com
. Create a route for that host and get a "subrouter" from it:
r := mux.NewRouter()
s := r.Host("www.example.com").Subrouter()
Then register routes in the subrouter:
s.HandleFunc("/products/", ProductsHandler)
s.HandleFunc("/products/{key}", ProductHandler)
s.HandleFunc("/articles/{category}/{id:[0-9]+}", ArticleHandler)
The three URL paths we registered above will only be tested if the domain is www.example.com
, because the subrouter is tested first. This is not only convenient, but also optimizes request matching. You can create subrouters combining any attribute matchers accepted by a route.
Subrouters can be used to create domain or path "namespaces": you define subrouters in a central place and then parts of the app can register its paths relatively to a given subrouter.
There's one more thing about subroutes. When a subrouter has a path prefix, the inner routes use it as base for their paths:
r := mux.NewRouter()
s := r.PathPrefix("/products").Subrouter()
s.HandleFunc("/", ProductsHandler)
s.HandleFunc("/{key}/", ProductHandler)
s.HandleFunc("/{key}/details", ProductDetailsHandler)
Static Files
Note that the path provided to PathPrefix()
represents a "wildcard": calling
PathPrefix("/static/").Handler(...)
means that the handler will be passed any
request that matches "/static/*". This makes it easy to serve static files with mux:
func main() {
var dir string
flag.StringVar(&dir, "dir", ".", "the directory to serve files from. Defaults to the current dir")
flag.Parse()
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.PathPrefix("/static/").Handler(http.StripPrefix("/static/", http.FileServer(http.Dir(dir))))
srv := &http.Server{
Handler: r,
Addr: "127.0.0.1:8000",
WriteTimeout: 15 * time.Second,
ReadTimeout: 15 * time.Second,
}
log.Fatal(srv.ListenAndServe())
}
Serving Single Page Applications
Most of the time it makes sense to serve your SPA on a separate web server from your API,
but sometimes it's desirable to serve them both from one place. It's possible to write a simple
handler for serving your SPA (for use with React Router's BrowserRouter for example), and leverage
mux's powerful routing for your API endpoints.
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"log"
"net/http"
"os"
"path/filepath"
"time"
"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
type spaHandler struct {
staticPath string
indexPath string
}
func (h spaHandler) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
path, err := filepath.Abs(r.URL.Path)
if err != nil {
http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusBadRequest)
return
}
path = filepath.Join(h.staticPath, path)
_, err = os.Stat(path)
if os.IsNotExist(err) {
http.ServeFile(w, r, filepath.Join(h.staticPath, h.indexPath))
return
} else if err != nil {
http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusInternalServerError)
return
}
http.FileServer(http.Dir(h.staticPath)).ServeHTTP(w, r)
}
func main() {
router := mux.NewRouter()
router.HandleFunc("/api/health", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(map[string]bool{"ok": true})
})
spa := spaHandler{staticPath: "build", indexPath: "index.html"}
router.PathPrefix("/").Handler(spa)
srv := &http.Server{
Handler: router,
Addr: "127.0.0.1:8000",
WriteTimeout: 15 * time.Second,
ReadTimeout: 15 * time.Second,
}
log.Fatal(srv.ListenAndServe())
}
Registered URLs
Now let's see how to build registered URLs.
Routes can be named. All routes that define a name can have their URLs built, or "reversed". We define a name calling Name()
on a route. For example:
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/articles/{category}/{id:[0-9]+}", ArticleHandler).
Name("article")
To build a URL, get the route and call the URL()
method, passing a sequence of key/value pairs for the route variables. For the previous route, we would do:
url, err := r.Get("article").URL("category", "technology", "id", "42")
...and the result will be a url.URL
with the following path:
"/articles/technology/42"
This also works for host and query value variables:
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.Host("{subdomain}.example.com").
Path("/articles/{category}/{id:[0-9]+}").
Queries("filter", "{filter}").
HandlerFunc(ArticleHandler).
Name("article")
url, err := r.Get("article").URL("subdomain", "news",
"category", "technology",
"id", "42",
"filter", "gorilla")
All variables defined in the route are required, and their values must conform to the corresponding patterns. These requirements guarantee that a generated URL will always match a registered route -- the only exception is for explicitly defined "build-only" routes which never match.
Regex support also exists for matching Headers within a route. For example, we could do:
r.HeadersRegexp("Content-Type", "application/(text|json)")
...and the route will match both requests with a Content-Type of application/json
as well as application/text
There's also a way to build only the URL host or path for a route: use the methods URLHost()
or URLPath()
instead. For the previous route, we would do:
host, err := r.Get("article").URLHost("subdomain", "news")
path, err := r.Get("article").URLPath("category", "technology", "id", "42")
And if you use subrouters, host and path defined separately can be built as well:
r := mux.NewRouter()
s := r.Host("{subdomain}.example.com").Subrouter()
s.Path("/articles/{category}/{id:[0-9]+}").
HandlerFunc(ArticleHandler).
Name("article")
url, err := r.Get("article").URL("subdomain", "news",
"category", "technology",
"id", "42")
Walking Routes
The Walk
function on mux.Router
can be used to visit all of the routes that are registered on a router. For example,
the following prints all of the registered routes:
package main
import (
"fmt"
"net/http"
"strings"
"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
func handler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
return
}
func main() {
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/", handler)
r.HandleFunc("/products", handler).Methods("POST")
r.HandleFunc("/articles", handler).Methods("GET")
r.HandleFunc("/articles/{id}", handler).Methods("GET", "PUT")
r.HandleFunc("/authors", handler).Queries("surname", "{surname}")
err := r.Walk(func(route *mux.Route, router *mux.Router, ancestors []*mux.Route) error {
pathTemplate, err := route.GetPathTemplate()
if err == nil {
fmt.Println("ROUTE:", pathTemplate)
}
pathRegexp, err := route.GetPathRegexp()
if err == nil {
fmt.Println("Path regexp:", pathRegexp)
}
queriesTemplates, err := route.GetQueriesTemplates()
if err == nil {
fmt.Println("Queries templates:", strings.Join(queriesTemplates, ","))
}
queriesRegexps, err := route.GetQueriesRegexp()
if err == nil {
fmt.Println("Queries regexps:", strings.Join(queriesRegexps, ","))
}
methods, err := route.GetMethods()
if err == nil {
fmt.Println("Methods:", strings.Join(methods, ","))
}
fmt.Println()
return nil
})
if err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
}
http.Handle("/", r)
}
Graceful Shutdown
Go 1.8 introduced the ability to gracefully shutdown a *http.Server
. Here's how to do that alongside mux
:
package main
import (
"context"
"flag"
"log"
"net/http"
"os"
"os/signal"
"time"
"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
func main() {
var wait time.Duration
flag.DurationVar(&wait, "graceful-timeout", time.Second * 15, "the duration for which the server gracefully wait for existing connections to finish - e.g. 15s or 1m")
flag.Parse()
r := mux.NewRouter()
srv := &http.Server{
Addr: "0.0.0.0:8080",
WriteTimeout: time.Second * 15,
ReadTimeout: time.Second * 15,
IdleTimeout: time.Second * 60,
Handler: r,
}
go func() {
if err := srv.ListenAndServe(); err != nil {
log.Println(err)
}
}()
c := make(chan os.Signal, 1)
signal.Notify(c, os.Interrupt)
<-c
ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), wait)
defer cancel()
srv.Shutdown(ctx)
log.Println("shutting down")
os.Exit(0)
}
Middleware
Mux supports the addition of middlewares to a Router, which are executed in the order they are added if a match is found, including its subrouters.
Middlewares are (typically) small pieces of code which take one request, do something with it, and pass it down to another middleware or the final handler. Some common use cases for middleware are request logging, header manipulation, or ResponseWriter
hijacking.
Mux middlewares are defined using the de facto standard type:
type MiddlewareFunc func(http.Handler) http.Handler
Typically, the returned handler is a closure which does something with the http.ResponseWriter and http.Request passed to it, and then calls the handler passed as parameter to the MiddlewareFunc. This takes advantage of closures being able access variables from the context where they are created, while retaining the signature enforced by the receivers.
A very basic middleware which logs the URI of the request being handled could be written as:
func loggingMiddleware(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
log.Println(r.RequestURI)
next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
})
}
Middlewares can be added to a router using Router.Use()
:
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/", handler)
r.Use(loggingMiddleware)
A more complex authentication middleware, which maps session token to users, could be written as:
type authenticationMiddleware struct {
tokenUsers map[string]string
}
func (amw *authenticationMiddleware) Populate() {
amw.tokenUsers["00000000"] = "user0"
amw.tokenUsers["aaaaaaaa"] = "userA"
amw.tokenUsers["05f717e5"] = "randomUser"
amw.tokenUsers["deadbeef"] = "user0"
}
func (amw *authenticationMiddleware) Middleware(next http.Handler) http.Handler {
return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
token := r.Header.Get("X-Session-Token")
if user, found := amw.tokenUsers[token]; found {
log.Printf("Authenticated user %s\n", user)
next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
} else {
http.Error(w, "Forbidden", http.StatusForbidden)
}
})
}
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/", handler)
amw := authenticationMiddleware{tokenUsers: make(map[string]string)}
amw.Populate()
r.Use(amw.Middleware)
Note: The handler chain will be stopped if your middleware doesn't call next.ServeHTTP()
with the corresponding parameters. This can be used to abort a request if the middleware writer wants to. Middlewares should write to ResponseWriter
if they are going to terminate the request, and they should not write to ResponseWriter
if they are not going to terminate it.
Handling CORS Requests
CORSMethodMiddleware intends to make it easier to strictly set the Access-Control-Allow-Methods
response header.
- You will still need to use your own CORS handler to set the other CORS headers such as
Access-Control-Allow-Origin
- The middleware will set the
Access-Control-Allow-Methods
header to all the method matchers (e.g. r.Methods(http.MethodGet, http.MethodPut, http.MethodOptions)
-> Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET,PUT,OPTIONS
) on a route - If you do not specify any methods, then:
Important: there must be an OPTIONS
method matcher for the middleware to set the headers.
Here is an example of using CORSMethodMiddleware
along with a custom OPTIONS
handler to set all the required CORS headers:
package main
import (
"net/http"
"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
func main() {
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/foo", fooHandler).Methods(http.MethodGet, http.MethodPut, http.MethodPatch, http.MethodOptions)
r.Use(mux.CORSMethodMiddleware(r))
http.ListenAndServe(":8080", r)
}
func fooHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
w.Header().Set("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*")
if r.Method == http.MethodOptions {
return
}
w.Write([]byte("foo"))
}
And an request to /foo
using something like:
curl localhost:8080/foo -v
Would look like:
* Trying ::1...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8080 (
> GET /foo HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8080
> User-Agent: curl/7.59.0
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET,PUT,PATCH,OPTIONS
< Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
< Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2019 20:13:30 GMT
< Content-Length: 3
< Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
<
* Connection
foo
Testing Handlers
Testing handlers in a Go web application is straightforward, and mux doesn't complicate this any further. Given two files: endpoints.go
and endpoints_test.go
, here's how we'd test an application using mux.
First, our simple HTTP handler:
package main
func HealthCheckHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
io.WriteString(w, `{"alive": true}`)
}
func main() {
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/health", HealthCheckHandler)
log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe("localhost:8080", r))
}
Our test code:
package main
import (
"net/http"
"net/http/httptest"
"testing"
)
func TestHealthCheckHandler(t *testing.T) {
req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", "/health", nil)
if err != nil {
t.Fatal(err)
}
rr := httptest.NewRecorder()
handler := http.HandlerFunc(HealthCheckHandler)
handler.ServeHTTP(rr, req)
if status := rr.Code; status != http.StatusOK {
t.Errorf("handler returned wrong status code: got %v want %v",
status, http.StatusOK)
}
expected := `{"alive": true}`
if rr.Body.String() != expected {
t.Errorf("handler returned unexpected body: got %v want %v",
rr.Body.String(), expected)
}
}
In the case that our routes have variables, we can pass those in the request. We could write
table-driven tests to test multiple
possible route variables as needed.
func main() {
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/metrics/{type}", MetricsHandler)
log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe("localhost:8080", r))
}
Our test file, with a table-driven test of routeVariables
:
func TestMetricsHandler(t *testing.T) {
tt := []struct{
routeVariable string
shouldPass bool
}{
{"goroutines", true},
{"heap", true},
{"counters", true},
{"queries", true},
{"adhadaeqm3k", false},
}
for _, tc := range tt {
path := fmt.Sprintf("/metrics/%s", tc.routeVariable)
req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", path, nil)
if err != nil {
t.Fatal(err)
}
rr := httptest.NewRecorder()
router := mux.NewRouter()
router.HandleFunc("/metrics/{type}", MetricsHandler)
router.ServeHTTP(rr, req)
if rr.Code == http.StatusOK && !tc.shouldPass {
t.Errorf("handler should have failed on routeVariable %s: got %v want %v",
tc.routeVariable, rr.Code, http.StatusOK)
}
}
}
Full Example
Here's a complete, runnable example of a small mux
based server:
package main
import (
"net/http"
"log"
"github.com/gorilla/mux"
)
func YourHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
w.Write([]byte("Gorilla!\n"))
}
func main() {
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/", YourHandler)
log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8000", r))
}
License
BSD licensed. See the LICENSE file for details.