Automatically skipping unmatched blocks when used as middleware

[janko]

In rodauth-rails, I've configured the Rodauth app to be used as a middleware. The problem is, people sometimes get tripped up about unmatched requests not reaching the Rails router. Let's use this example:

class Middleware < Roda
  plugin :middleware

  route do |r|
    r.on "auth" do
      r.post("login") { ... }
      r.post("create-account") { ... }
      # ...
    end
  end
end

class App
  # ... main app ...
end

use Middleware
run App

In the example above, any /auth/* requests not matched by terminal matchers will not automatically get forwarded to the main app. To address this, I've been recommending using the pass plugin:

plugin :pass

route do |r|
  r.on "auth" do
    r.post("login") { ... }
    r.post("create-account") { ... }
    # ...
    r.pass
  end
end

However, given that the Rodauth documentation cannot show this in every example, people get tripped up by this.

Is there a way rodauth-rails could configure the Roda middleware to automatically exit from matchers that didn't handle the request? Would overriding block_result_body to call pass work, or is that too hacky?

module RequestMethods
  def block_result_body(result)
    case result
    when nil, false
      pass
    else
      super
    end
  end
end

What do you think about possibly introducing this functionality into the middleware plugin? My idea was to add a plugin option that calls throw :next instead of pass in the example above? I think that might even be more correct behavior, because it doesn't change how the routing tree works, just forwards unhandled requests.

Another idea was for rodauth-rails to use the not_found plugin and call throw :next. It does feel like it would be relying on internals of the middleware plugin a bit, though.

not_found do
  throw :next, true
end

[jeremyevans]

I think using the not_found approach is probably best for what you want. I'm open to a middleware plugin option that sets that up automatically, so the throw :next, true internals don't have to leak out.

[jeremyevans]

Implemented in 05af2e5

[janko]

Thank you! 🙏 I look forward to activating this once it's released 👍