How to access req and res objects in hooks?

[Riyadh Zenasni]

I would like to ask whether it is possible to access the req and the res objects provided by express .

Essentially I would like to check the http request headers each time before executing a hook.

Thanks in advance.

[PitaJ]

For what hook?

[Riyadh Zenasni]

@PitaJ I would say any hook. Is there a way to do so?

[PitaJ]

You might be able to use continuation-local storage to do this. If you added a middleware like so:

var cls = require('cls-hooked');

var express = cls.createNamespace('express');

app.use(function (req, res, next) {
  express.set('request', req);
  express.set('response', res);

  express.run(next);
});

then you could probably use those later like this:

plugin.addStyleSheet = function (data, next) {
  var req = express.get('request');
  // do something with request
  
  next(null, data);
};

Beware, I haven't tested any of this. What I wrote may not work at all. It's worth a try. I general, though, I'd recommend using the data you have in the hook itself. There's usually a better way.

[Riyadh Zenasni]

Interesting. I never knew that such a thing existed (storing at the chain level). I'll post again when I give it a try.

Doing it through the data provided at the hook level is very difficult, because the different hooks (userCreate, ...etc) are executed away from the middleware scope.

Thanks.

[julian]

Yes... adding in continuation local storage is something we really wanted to do, although when @akhoury tried to do it a couple years back, the technology was as-yet still a little immature.

Perhaps it is time for us to take a look at it again