Proper way to remove middleware from the Express stack?

Question

Is there a canonical way to remove middleware added with app.use from the stack? It seems that it should be possible to just modify the app.stack array directl

Answer 1

This is a useful functionality if you are inheriting some unwanted middleware from a framework built on express.

Building on some of the answers that came before me: In express 4.x the middleware can be found in app._router.stack. Note that the middleware are invoked in order.

// app is your express service

console.log(app._router.stack)
// [Layer, Layer, Layer, ...]

Tip: You can search the individual layers for the one you want to remove/move

const middlewareIndex = app._router.stack.findIndex(layer => {
 // logic to id the specific middleware
});

Then you can just move/remove them with standard array methods like splice/unshift/etc

// Remove the matched middleware
app._router.stack.splice(middlewareIndex, 1);