allow-methods

Allow-Methods

Express/connect middleware to handle 405 errors, when a request method is not supported by your route or application.

• Requirements
• Usage
  • Route-level
  • Application-level
• Migration
• Contributing
• License

Requirements

This library requires the following to run:

• Node.js 20+

Usage

Install with npm:

npm install allow-methods

Load the library into your code with a require call:

const { allowMethods } = require('allow-methods');

allowMethods will return a middleware function that will error if the request method does not match one of the allowed methods. The error will have message and status properties which you can use.

It accepts two arguments. Firstly, an array of allowed methods:

allowMethods(['get', 'head', 'post']);

Secondly (optionally) a message which will be used in the error if the request message does not match:

allowMethods(['get', 'head'], 'Unsupported method');

Route-level

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app
    .route('/example')
    // Only requests with a GET/HEAD method will continue
    .all(allowMethods(['get', 'head']))
    // Define GET handler
    .get(function () { ... });

If you want to do something useful with the error, for example output a sensible JSON response, you will need to define an error handler for your application (after the route definition):

app.use(function (error, requst, response, next) {
    response.status(error.status || 500).send({
        message: error.message
    });
});

Application-level

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

// Only allow GET/HEAD methods across the entire application
app.use(allowMethods(['get', 'head']));

Migration

A new major version of this project is released if breaking changes are introduced. We maintain a migration guide to help users migrate between these versions.

Contributing

The contributing guide is available here. All contributors must follow this library's code of conduct.

License

Licensed under the MIT license.
Copyright © 2015, Rowan Manning

Changelog

7.1.0 (2025-05-21)

Features

• add Node.js 24 support (b2f1d7c)