Creating Middleware

To create middleware, write a callable capable of receiving minimally PSR-7 ServerRequest and Response objects, and a callback to call the next middleware in the chain. In your middleware, you can handle as much or as little of the request as you want, including delegating to other middleware. By accepting the third argument, $next, it can allow further processing via invoking that argument, or return handling to the parent middleware by returning a response.

As an example, consider the following middleware which will use an external router to map the incoming request path to a handler; if unable to map the request, it returns processing to the next middleware.

function ($req, $res, $next) use ($router) {
    $path = $req->getUri()->getPath();

    // Route the path
    $route = $router->route($path);
    if (! $route) {
        return $next($req, $res);
    }

    $handler = $route->getHandler();
    return $handler($req, $res, $next);
}

Middleware written in this way can be any of the following:

• Closures (as shown above)
• Functions
• Static class methods
• PHP array callbacks (e.g., [ $dispatcher, 'dispatch' ], where $dispatcher is a class instance)
• Invokable PHP objects (i.e., instances of classes implementing __invoke())
• Objects implementing Zend\Stratigility\MiddlewareInterface (including Zend\Stratigility\MiddlewarePipe)

In all cases, if you wish to implement typehinting, the signature is:

function (
    Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface $request,
    Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface $response,
    callable $next
) : Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface

Legacy error middleware

• Deprecated since 1.3.0; to be removed in version 2.0.0. Please use the the NotFoundHandler and ErrorHandler detailed in the error handling chapter, or equivalents.

The implementation Stratigility offers also allows you to write specialized error handler middleware. The signature is the same as for normal middleware, except that it expects an additional argument prepended to the signature, $error. (Alternately, you can implement Zend\Stratigility\ErrorMiddlewareInterface.) The signature is:

function (
    $error, // Can be any type
    Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface $request,
    Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface $response,
    callable $next
) : Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface