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+[[middlewares]]
+== Middlewares
+
+Cowboy delegates the request processing to middleware components.
+By default, two middlewares are defined, for the routing and handling
+of the request, as is detailed in most of this guide.
+
+Middlewares give you complete control over how requests are to be
+processed. You can add your own middlewares to the mix or completely
+change the chain of middlewares as needed.
+
+Cowboy will execute all middlewares in the given order, unless one
+of them decides to stop processing.
+
+=== Usage
+
+Middlewares only need to implement a single callback: `execute/2`.
+It is defined in the `cowboy_middleware` behavior.
+
+This callback has two arguments. The first is the `Req` object.
+The second is the environment.
+
+Middlewares can return one of three different values:
+
+* `{ok, Req, Env}` to continue the request processing
+* `{suspend, Module, Function, Args}` to hibernate
+* `{stop, Req}` to stop processing and move on to the next request
+
+Of note is that when hibernating, processing will resume on the given
+MFA, discarding all previous stacktrace. Make sure you keep the `Req`
+and `Env` in the arguments of this MFA for later use.
+
+If an error happens during middleware processing, Cowboy will not try
+to send an error back to the socket, the process will just crash. It
+is up to the middleware to make sure that a reply is sent if something
+goes wrong.
+
+=== Configuration
+
+The middleware environment is defined as the `env` protocol option.
+In the previous chapters we saw it briefly when we needed to pass
+the routing information. It is a list of tuples with the first
+element being an atom and the second any Erlang term.
+
+Two values in the environment are reserved:
+
+* `listener` contains the name of the listener
+* `result` contains the result of the processing
+
+The `listener` value is always defined. The `result` value can be
+set by any middleware. If set to anything other than `ok`, Cowboy
+will not process any subsequent requests on this connection.
+
+The middlewares that come with Cowboy may define or require other
+environment values to perform.
+
+You can update the environment by calling the `cowboy:set_env/3`
+convenience function, adding or replacing a value in the environment.
+
+=== Routing middleware
+
+The routing middleware requires the `dispatch` value. If routing
+succeeds, it will put the handler name and options in the `handler`
+and `handler_opts` values of the environment, respectively.
+
+=== Handler middleware
+
+The handler middleware requires the `handler` and `handler_opts`
+values. It puts the result of the request handling into `result`.