Explore the functionality of the "next" function in Express middleware and its role in redirecting to another function.

Question

I am new to Nodejs and working on Express js and now I am working on "middleware functions" for a specific route and I want to know "what is next used for", means after verifying what the "next" function can do? If we want to move/redirect to another function then how do we do that? What is "checkAuthentication"? This is my current code

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

// Custom middleware function
const authMiddleware = (req, res, next) => {
  // Check if user is authenticated
  const isAuthenticated = checkAuthentication(req);
  
  if (isAuthenticated) {
    next();
  } else {
    // User is not authenticated, send an unauthorized response
    res.status(401).send('Unauthorized');
  }
};

// Middleware function is applied to specific routes
app.get('/protected', authMiddleware, (req, res) => {
  res.send('Protected Route');
});

// Route handler
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send('Home Page');
});

// Start the server
app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server is listening on port 3000');
});

Answer 1

Next is the callback function passed to the middleware function. You can find it under different names in different frameworks but the concept remains the same.

I will try to explain the middleware through your code itself.

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

function checkAuthentication(req) {
  /*
  I am considering this as my authentication function. 
  When the user logged in, server has sent him a token, which now will act as a validator. 
  */

  if (req.headers.token) {
    const user = someFunctionToFetchUser(req.header.token)
    return user
  } else {
    return false
  }
}

/*
Now I want a function to be there on each protected api routes
to make user if user has a valid token then only allow them to interact with the data base otherwise throw an error 
*/


const authMiddleware = (req, res, next) => {
  // Check if user is authenticated
  const isAuthenticated = checkAuthentication(req);

  if (isAuthenticated) {
    // Now you have verified the has valid a token. So allow user 
    // to reach to the controller or any other middleware, if any.
    next();
  } else {
    // User is not authenticated, send an unauthorized response
    res.status(401).send('Unauthorized');
  }
};

// Middleware function is applied to specific routes
app.get('/protected', authMiddleware, (req, res) => {
  res.send('Protected Route');
});

// You can have any number of middlewares
app.get('/protected', authMiddleware, someOtherMiddleware, (req, res) => {
  res.send('Protected Route');
});

// And also you can pass data from middleware to next middleware/controller also by attahching it with request

function newMiddleware(req, res, next) {
  req.foo = "bar" //Now you can access this foo variable in next function.
}