net/http: ResponseWriter implementations don't always follow documentation #17653

blixt · 2016-10-28T20:44:22Z

These are excerpts from the documentation for the ResponseWriter interface. For Write:

// If WriteHeader has not yet been called, Write calls
// WriteHeader(http.StatusOK) before writing the data.

For WriteHeader:

// If WriteHeader is not called explicitly, the first call to Write
// will trigger an implicit WriteHeader(http.StatusOK).

The code below never calls ResponseWriter.WriteHeader for simple requests. I had expected that the implementation of the ResponseWriter interface would follow it by calling out to the interface WriteHeader method instead of directly calling its internal writeHeader function.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
)

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        fmt.Fprintln(w, "Hello World!")
    })
    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", Middleware(http.DefaultServeMux))
}

func Middleware(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        // Use a different ResponseWriter for this request...
        w2 := myResponseWriter{w}
        h.ServeHTTP(w2, r)
    })
}

type myResponseWriter struct {
    http.ResponseWriter
}

func (w myResponseWriter) WriteHeader(code int) {
    // This code is never called with the http.response implementation.
    w.ResponseWriter.WriteHeader(code)
    fmt.Println("Yay, I wrote a header!")
}

I also put this code on the Go Playground.

Go version that I'm using:

go version go1.7.3 darwin/amd64

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

blixt · 2016-10-28T20:48:57Z

Nevermind, I was thinking a bit oddly about this, that something else is causing WriteHeader to be called but if the concrete implementation does everything it can't know that it's been wrapped.

blixt · 2016-10-28T21:09:51Z

If someone else finds this issue because they were trying to do what I'm doing, I believe this is a valid base to start off a ResponseWriter wrapper from:

type MyResponseWriter struct {
    http.ResponseWriter
    wroteHeader bool
}

func (w *MyResponseWriter) Write(p []byte) (n int, err error) {
    if !w.wroteHeader {
        w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
    }
    return w.ResponseWriter.Write(p)
}

func (w *MyResponseWriter) WriteHeader(code int) {
    w.ResponseWriter.WriteHeader(code)
    // Check after in case there's error handling in the wrapped ResponseWriter.
    if !w.wroteHeader {
        return
    }
    w.wroteHeader = true
    // Do other stuff here.
}

blixt closed this as completed Oct 28, 2016

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net/http: ResponseWriter implementations don't always follow documentation #17653

net/http: ResponseWriter implementations don't always follow documentation #17653

blixt commented Oct 28, 2016

blixt commented Oct 28, 2016

blixt commented Oct 28, 2016 •

edited

net/http: ResponseWriter implementations don't always follow documentation #17653

net/http: ResponseWriter implementations don't always follow documentation #17653

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blixt commented Oct 28, 2016

blixt commented Oct 28, 2016

blixt commented Oct 28, 2016 • edited

blixt commented Oct 28, 2016 •

edited