The Cosmo Router can be easily extended by providing custom modules. Modules are pure Go code and can implement one or multiple interfaces. The following interfaces are provided:
  • core.RouterOnRequestHandler Implements a custom middleware that runs before most internal middleware in the router for each client request. Most importantly this is called before tracing and authentication logic for each request. Use case: Custom Authentication Logic, Custom Tracing Logic, Early return, Request Validation.
  • core.RouterMiddlewareHandler Implements a custom middleware on the router. The middleware is called for every client request. It allows you to modify the request before it is processed by the GraphQL engine. Use case: Logging, Caching, Early return, Request Validation, Header manipulation.
  • core.EnginePreOriginHandler Implements a custom handler that is executed before the request is sent to the subgraph. This handler is called for every subgraph request. Use case: Logging, Header manipulation.
  • core.EnginePostOriginHandler Implement a custom handler executed after the request to the subgraph but before the response is passed to the GraphQL engine. This handler is called for every subgraph response. Use cases: Logging, Caching.
  • core.Provisioner Implements a Module lifecycle hook that is executed when the module is instantiated. Use it to prepare your module and validate the configuration.
  • core.Cleaner Implements a Module lifecycle hook that is executed after the server is shutdown. Use it to close connections gracefully or for any other cleanup.
*OriginHandler handlers are called concurrently when your GraphQL operation results in multiple subgraph requests. Due to that circumstance, you should handle the initial router request/response objects ctx.Request() and ctx.ResponseWriter() as read-only objects. Any modification without protecting them from concurrent writes, e.g., by a mutex, results in a race condition.
RouterOnRequestHander is only available since Router 0.188.0

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Learn by Example

If you want to see how to develop your own modules, check out our examples repository. It contains examples to build and upgrade your own router.

Router Examples

Explore production-ready examples of custom modules and router setups.

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Concepts

The following sections will guide you through important concepts and best practices for developing custom modules.

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Priority Loading of Modules

When loading multiple modules, the order is not inherently guaranteed. To ensure a specific loading order, you can use the Priority option. Modules with lower priority numbers are loaded first. Below is an example configuration: 
core.ModuleInfo{
	// This is the ID of your module, it must be unique
	ID: "myModule",
	// The priority of your module, lower the number higher the priority
	// Value should be > 0
	Priority: 1,
	New: func() app.Module {
		return MyModule{}
	},
}
In this example, the module myModule has a priority of 1, meaning it will be loaded before modules with higher priority values.

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Access the GraphQL operation

During the client request, you have access to the actual GraphQL operation. Simply call: 
// ctx core.RequestContext

operation := ctx.Operation()
c.Name() // MyOperation
c.Type() // Query
c.OperationHash() // 81671788718
c.Content() // query MyOperation { ... }

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Access query plan information

In Middleware, you can access some stats about the query plan that will be used for the operation. 
func (m *MyModule) Middleware(ctx core.RequestContext, next http.Handler) {
	qps, err := ctx.Operation().QueryPlanStats()
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}

	fmt.Printf("subgraphs contacted: %v\n", qps.SubgraphFetches)
	fmt.Printf("total subgraphs contacted: %d\n", qps.TotalSubgraphFetches)

	// Call the next handler in the chain or return early by calling w.Write()
	next.ServeHTTP(ctx.ResponseWriter(), ctx.Request())
}
QueryPlanStats includes the following info:
  • Total count of subgraph fetches
  • A map of subgraph names to the number of times they will be fetched
Middleware is executed before any of the fetches are made, so you can use this information as a heuristic cost for rate limiting, etc.

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Access Request Context

In every handler, you can add/remove, or modify response headers. We also provide a convenient, safe way to share data across handlers. 
// ctx core.RequestContext

// Sets a custom header on the final response
ctx.ResponseWriter().Header().Set("myHeader", c.GetString("myKey"))

// Provides access to the request logger
ctx.Logger().Info("My log line")

// Sets a value on the context. Use c.GetString to access the underlying value
// in any other handler you want
ctx.Set("myKey", "myValue")

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Access Subgraph through Request Context

Through the request context you can retrieve the active subgraph for the current request. This can be done in the OnOriginRequest hook as show below 
func (m MyModule) OnOriginRequest(request *http.Request, ctx core.RequestContext) (*http.Request, *http.Response) {
	subgraph := ctx.ActiveSubgraph(request)
	subgraph.Name // Subgraph name
	subgraph.Id   // Subgraph ID from the controlplane
	subgraph.Url  // Stored subgraph URL from the router config
}
A more complex example including tests is accessible at https://github.com/wundergraph/cosmo/tree/main/router/cmd/custom

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Access authentication information

Authentication information, including claims and the provider that authenticated the request, can be accessed through core.RequestContext.Authentication()
For a full example, please check out https://github.com/wundergraph/cosmo/tree/main/router/cmd/custom-jwt

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Change Authentication Information

Above, we showed how to access Authentication information. There can be cases where your authentication could depend partly on another system, and you want to set elements for use with other directives, such as @requiresScopes. In order to do that, you can use auth.SetScopes() to manually change the authentication’s scopes. 
func (m *SetScopesModule) Middleware(ctx core.RequestContext, next http.Handler) {
	auth := ctx.Authentication()
	if auth != nil {
		// You can set the scopes for a request, based on an
		// external system, and then utilize that for the @requiresScope
		// directive
		auth.SetScopes([]string{"read:employee"})
	}
	next.ServeHTTP(ctx.ResponseWriter(), ctx.Request())
}
.SetScopes() overwrites the existing scopes. If you’d like to append/preserve the built-in scopes, you can first use auth.Claims() to get the existing scopes, and incorporate that into the updates scopes. 
func (m *SetScopesModule) Middleware(ctx core.RequestContext, next http.Handler) {
	auth := ctx.Authentication()
	if auth != nil {
		claims := auth.Claims()
		existingScopes := claims["scopes"].(string)
		scopesSlice := strings.Split(existingScopes, " ")
		updatedScopes := append(scopesSlice, m.Scopes...)
		auth.SetScopes(updatedScopes)
	}

	next.ServeHTTP(ctx.ResponseWriter(), ctx.Request())
}
If you have to set the authentication scopes, but the authentication could be not set, you can call the method ctx.SetAuthenticationScopes(scopes []string) that, if the Authentication is not set, it will initialize it with an empty object and set the scopes. If the authentication is already set, it will just override the scopes. 
func (m *SetScopesModule) Middleware(core.RequestContext, next http.Handler) {
	// Initialize the scopes
	customScopes := []string{"scope1", "scope2"}

	// Set the authentication scopes
	ctx.SetAuthenticationScopes(customScopes)

	next.ServeHTTP(ctx.ResponseWriter(), ctx.Request())
}
The scopes will be available to subsequent custom modules, just like when using SetScopes().

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Do Changes Before Authentication Occurs

In the previous section, the Middleware runs after the authentication of the request. However, sometimes you might want to run authentication related logic before the authentication actually happens. For example, let’s say that your client sends the Authorization header without the Bearer part in the header and you want to add Bearer to the header, for this you can use the RouterOnRequestHandler hook. 
func (m *SetScopesModule) RouterOnRequest(ctx core.RequestContext, next http.Handler) {
    authHeader := ctx.Request().Header.Get("Authorization")

    if authHeader != "" && !strings.HasPrefix(strings.ToLower(authHeader), "bearer ") {
       ctx.Request().Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+authHeader)
    }

    next.ServeHTTP(ctx.ResponseWriter(), ctx.Request())
}

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Return GraphQL conform errors

Please always use core.WriteResponseError to return an error. It ensures that the request is properly tracked for tracing and metrics. 
func (m *MyModule) Middleware(ctx core.RequestContext, next http.Handler) {
    // Exit early
    core.WriteResponseError(ctx, fmt.Errorf("my custom error: %w", err))
    // or pass on
    next.ServeHTTP(ctx.ResponseWriter(), ctx.Request())
}

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Request Handler lifecycle

The current module handler allow to intercept and modify request / response subgraphs. 
Incoming client request
    │
    └─▶ core.RouterOnRequestHandler (Early return, Custom Authentication Logic)
    │
    └─▶ core.RouterMiddlewareHandler (Early return, Validation)
       │
       └─▶ core.EnginePreOriginHandler (Header mods, Custom Response, Caching)
       │
       └─▶ "Request to the subgraph"
       │
       └─▶ core.EnginePostOriginHandler (Logging, Response mods)
       │
       └─▶ "Fulfill subgraph response"

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Module Configuration

If you need to pass external configuration values to your module, you can do so easily by annotating the fields in your module struct. Fields must start with an uppercase letter to make them accessible. 
const myModuleID = "myModule"

type MyModule struct {
	// Properties that are set by the config file are automatically populated based on the `mapstructure` tag
	// Create a new section under `modules.<name>` in the config file with the same name as your module.
	// Don't forget in Go the first letter of a property must be uppercase to be exported

	Value uint64 `mapstructure:"value"`

	Logger *zap.Logger
}

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Example Config file

Based on the example above we will populate the field Value with the value 1. You can also validate your config in the core.Provisioner handler.
config.yaml
version: '1'

modules:
  myModule: # Id of your module
    Value: 1

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Future Plans

We’re currently working on the iteration of the module system. It will allow you to fully customize the router with a complete overhaul of the development experience. The new module system will be available in the next major release of the router. If you have any questions or suggestions, please reach out to us on the GitHub ADR.