Is it possible to nest Mux routers?

[Karol Stępniewski]

Using code below, when I access /test2 it responds with 404 - not found. /test1 works correctly. I guess this happens because "/" matching is exact, so the execution chain doesn't even reach the subRouter. But how should I do it to make it work?

My main goal is to add some initial work which would be common for all routes in subRouter, and only for them. To be even more specific, I would like to use Negroni as my middleware orchiestrator.

I'm familiar with the concept of Subrouter in Mux, but AFAIK I can't use it in similar fashion as example below, in particular, I can't inject anything between mainRouter and its Subrouter. Is this even possible using Mux, or should I look for different Router?

    package main
   
    import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
    "github.com/gorilla/mux"
    )
   
    func main() {
   
    mainRouter := mux.NewRouter()
    subRouter := mux.NewRouter()
   
    mainRouter.HandleFunc("/test1", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) { fmt.Fprint(w, "test1") })
   
    subRouter.HandleFunc("/test2", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) { fmt.Fprint(w, "test2") })
   
    mainRouter.Handle("/", subRouter)
   
    http.ListenAndServe(":9999", mainRouter)
    }

On the Negroni website there is an example of adding middleware to the group of routes (which also does not work if adminRoutes has couple of different routes) and this basically what I'm trying to achieve.

    router := mux.NewRouter()
    adminRoutes := mux.NewRouter()
    // add admin routes here
   
    Create a new negroni for the admin middleware
    router.Handle("/admin", negroni.New(
      Middleware1,
      Middleware2,
      negroni.Wrap(adminRoutes),
    ))

[Matt Silverlock]

Just to confirm--since your example seems a bit contrived--do you want the below behaviour:

1. All routes under /admin/* to have a certain set of middleware applied

2. All routes under /something-else/* to have another set of middleware applied

3. All top-level routes under / to set the common middleware that apply to *all* routes.

Is that right?

Note that this is definitely possible with mux + negroni together, but I need to understand your use-case first. You can't do mainRouter.Handle("/", subRouter) like you are doing now. If you really just want to wrap individual routes then you don't even need a sub-router - you just need to mainRouter.HandleFunc("/test2", negroni.New(negroni.NewLogger(), negroni.Wrap(YourHandler)) for that specific route.

[Matt Silverlock]

(if you can actually provide your *intended* URL/route layout it's much easier to understand what you're getting at).

[Karol Stępniewski]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for answering. Actually my intended layout looks like that:

"/", "/login", "/register" - routes without middleware

"/upload", "/file", "/history", etc. (couple other routes, but all in "/") - routes with middleware

I wanted to group those middleware-required routes in one router, and then somehow bind it to the main router. I ended up wrapping each handler function individually using wrapping function,  but I don't like this solution.

[Matt Silverlock]

This is certainly possible, but Negroni isn't my favorite thing in the world and makes things a little complicated since you have to tied in so heavily to it. Have you tried providing your routes/information (your updated info was much clearer) via an issue on the Negroni GitHub repo? I think you may have already done that, but the issue was already closed.

Unless you have a huge amount of middleware you want to re-use (unlikely) you're best of just explicitly re-applying that middleware "chain" to a sub-router and being done with it.

[bennAH]

My bad for resurrecting an old thread, I came across this problem and the following snippet below works for me:

https://gist.github.com/bennAH/74d29c3dfd563e6e8a52

If you try it yourself and run it locally, you will have printed when the following is accessed:

localhost:2022 : no auth - Home

localhost:2022/about : no auth - About

localhost:2022/user:  auth needed - User

localhost:2022/user/account:  auth needed - User Account