Creating custom middleware in Django - Try It Yourself

Creating custom middleware

📖 Scenario: You are building a Django web application that needs to log every request's path for debugging purposes.

🎯 Goal: Create a custom middleware that logs the request path each time a user visits any page.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a middleware class named LogRequestMiddleware

Add an __init__ method that accepts get_response

Implement a __call__ method that logs the request path using print

Return the response from the middleware

Add the middleware to the MIDDLEWARE list in settings.py

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Custom middleware is useful for adding features like logging, authentication checks, or modifying requests and responses in Django applications.

💼 Career

Understanding middleware helps you customize request handling and is a common task in Django web development jobs.

1

Create the middleware class

Create a class called LogRequestMiddleware with an __init__ method that takes get_response as a parameter and stores it as an instance variable.

Django

class LogRequestMiddleware:
    def __init__(self, get_response):
        # Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember, the __init__ method sets up the middleware with the next callable.

2

Add the __call__ method

Add a __call__ method to LogRequestMiddleware that takes request as a parameter and calls self.get_response(request) to get the response.

Django

class LogRequestMiddleware:
    def __init__(self, get_response):
        self.get_response = get_response

    def __call__(self, request):
        # Your code here

Need a hint?

The __call__ method processes the request and returns the response.

3

Log the request path

Inside the __call__ method, before calling self.get_response(request), add a print statement that outputs "Request path:" followed by request.path.

Django

class LogRequestMiddleware:
    def __init__(self, get_response):
        self.get_response = get_response

    def __call__(self, request):
        # Your code here
        response = self.get_response(request)
        return response

Need a hint?

Use print("Request path:", request.path) to log the path.

4

Add middleware to settings

In settings.py, add the string 'your_app.middleware.LogRequestMiddleware' to the MIDDLEWARE list.

Django

# Add 'your_app.middleware.LogRequestMiddleware' to MIDDLEWARE list in settings.py
MIDDLEWARE = [
    # existing middleware entries
    # Your code here
]

Need a hint?

Insert 'your_app.middleware.LogRequestMiddleware' at the end of the MIDDLEWARE list.