AZure FUnction MIddleware

AzFuMi provides a simple way to use the middleware pattern for Azure Functions with NodeJS in order to define cross-cutting functionality such as schema validation, authorization and error handling.

Usage

The interface is simple to use and could be easily expanded:

const schema = Joi.object().keys({
    name: Joi.string().min(3).max(30).required(),
});

const functionHandler = async (context: Context, req: HttpRequest): Promise<void> => {
    context.res = { status: 201 };
};

export default middleware(functionHandler, [validation(schema)]);

The goal is to provide a minimal feature set with generic functionality and an easy interface to create other middleware functions, which could be used for an Azure function.

Error Handling

The middleware provides a central way to handle errors occurring in the control flow of the function. Every error thrown within the function gets caught by the middleware and processed. To define the correct response to a specific error the following structure can be thrown:

export class ApplicationError<T> extends Error {
    status: number;
    body?: T;
}

Any error thrown in the function with this signature is getting returned to the caller with the defined status and body.

Generic Functions

For additional generic functionality like request validation or authorization functions could be defined. The functions need to have the following structure:

export type MiddlewareFunction = (context: Context, request: HttpRequest) => Promise<void>;

The function receives the Azure Function context and request to operate. The function needs to be passed when the middleware is configured.

export default middleware(functionHandler, [validation(schema)]);

In the above example a validation function is passed with a schema. All passed functions are called before the in the defined order before the handler function containing the logic for the request is called.

Validation

The function to validate requests is based on Joi. The usage is fairly simply:

export default middleware(functionHandler, [validation(schema)]);

The passed schema is a Joi ObjectSchema to check the passed request against. When the request is valid against the schema, the next middleware function gets called. In case the check of the request against the schema is invalid, the middleware function throws an error, canceling the request and returning aan 400 - Bad Request with the Joi error message.

The body of the response could be customized by adding a transformer like in the following example. The passed message is the Joi error message.

export default middleware(handler, [
  validation(accountWithConnectionRequestSchema(), (message) => ({
    type: 'Invalid  request object',
    detail: message,
  })),
])

Authorization

To authorize a request the middleware function authorization could be used. The function is verifying a request parameter against a JWT Bearer Token. The information get extracted using two functions for the correct parameter and token counterpart.

export default middleware(functionHandler, [authorization([])]);

The passed values in the array needs to be defined based on the following structure:

export type Rule<T> = {
    parameterExtractor: (parameters: ContextBindingData) => string;
    jwtExtractor: (jwt: T) => string;
};