rust tower middleware http

Tower middleware for composable HTTP service layers

Marcus Chen Jan 2026

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use axum::{Router, routing::get};
use tower::ServiceBuilder;
use tower_http::{trace::TraceLayer, timeout::TimeoutLayer};
use std::time::Duration;

async fn handler() -> &'static str {
    "Hello"
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let app = Router::new()
        .route("/", get(handler))
        .layer(
            ServiceBuilder::new()
                .layer(TraceLayer::new_for_http())
                .layer(TimeoutLayer::new(Duration::from_secs(10)))
        );
}

1 file · rust Explain with highlit

Tower is a library of modular middleware (called "layers") for async services. Axum is built on Tower, so you can use any Tower middleware: TimeoutLayer, CompressionLayer, TraceLayer, etc. Layers wrap services, adding behavior like logging, metrics, or retries. The ServiceBuilder API chains layers in the order they're applied. I use tower-http for common HTTP concerns and write custom layers for domain-specific logic (auth, rate limiting). The beauty is that layers are decoupled from the framework: you can test them in isolation and reuse them across different servers. This composability is a key strength of the Rust async ecosystem.