Next.js API Middleware

next-api-middleware is a library designed to bring clean, composable middleware patterns to Next.js API routes, addressing the limitations of Next.js's native middleware recommendations. It provides an API inspired by Express.js and Koa.js, enabling developers to build a "winding and unwinding stack" of middleware functions for request processing and response modification. The current stable version is 3.0.0, which notably dropped support for Node.js 12 and 14. While actively maintained, it is explicitly built for and tested with the Next.js Pages Router and has not been verified for compatibility with the newer App Router. Its core differentiator lies in offering structured middleware orchestration using `label` and `use` functions, allowing for modular and reusable backend logic within Next.js applications.