Updating middleware syntax about piccolo_api

[dantownsend]

@jrycw Thanks. Let's leave the middleware as it is for now then, and we can always revisit it in the future 👍

[dantownsend]

You're right - the middleware in Piccolo API is a mix of different styles.

The way I remember it, is async def __call__(self, scope, receive, send) is a 'pure' ASGI middleware. If you look at the ASGI spec itself, this is how it expects middleware to behave.

The middleware which uses async def dispatch(self, request, call_next) is based off Starlette's BaseHTTPMiddleware, which adds a level of abstraction, so you deal with a request object, which arguably is simpler.

I'm not sure which is generally preferred nowadays - I imagine that both will work for the foreseeable future. Which one do you think is best?

[jrycw]

Both options seem excellent. The determining factor may depend on package dependencies. For example, I've heard that litestar originally relied on starlette, but that may no longer be the case.

[dantownsend]

Yeah, litestar no longer has starlette as a dependency. We sometimes found it problematic in the past, because litestar and fastapi would require conflicting versions of starlette.

piccolo_api has fastapi as a dependency, which could possibly be changed to an optional dependency.

I was thinking about the different styles of middleware that Piccolo API uses recently, but can't remember what I decided.

@sinisaos Do you have any thoughts on the different styles of middleware?

[sinisaos]

Yeah, litestar no longer has starlette as a dependency. We sometimes found it problematic in the past, because litestar and fastapi would require conflicting versions of starlette.

Starlette is not Litestar dependency for a long time (I think from version 1.50 or something like that).

piccolo_api has fastapi as a dependency, which could possibly be changed to an optional dependency.

I think we will have a hard time putting FastAPI as an optional dependency without major code interventions, because we need FastAPI for FastAPIWrapper which is the base for Piccolo Admin. I think we should stick with FastAPI as the most popular and used ASGI framework. Other options (but not nearly as popular) are BlackSheep (which has been slower to maintaince lately) or Litestar (I've even made some contributions, but I'm kind of having a hard time reading Litestar's source code). I think FastAPI is still the best option for something like FastAPIWrapper.

Both variants are equally good, but I find the middleware based on Starlette BaseHTTPMiddleware a bit cleaner and clearer (atleast for me).

[jrycw]

I'll proceed with closing this issue since it seems there's no more input. Thank you, @dantownsend and @sinisaos , for your participation!