Reloading rails middleware without restarting the server in development - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a rails 4 app with middleware located at lib/some/middleware.rb which is currently injected into the stack though an initializer like so:
MyApp::Application.configure.do |config|
config.middleware.use 'Some::Middleware'
end
Unfortunately, any time I change something I need to restart the server. How can I reload it on each request in development mode? I've seen similar questions about reloading lib code with either autoloading or wrapping code in a to_prepare block but I'm unsure how that could be applied in this scenario.
Thanks,
- FJM
Update #1
If I try to delete the middleware and then re-add it in a to_prepare block I get an error "Can't modify frozen array".

Answer 1

I thought that at some point Rails was smart enough replacing middleware code at runtime, but I may be wrong.
Here is what I came up with, circumventing Ruby class loading craziness and leveraging Rails class reloading.
Add the middleware to the stack:
# config/environments/development.rb
[...]
config.middleware.use "SomeMiddleware", "some_additional_paramter"
Make use of auto-reloading, but make sure that the running rails instance and the already initialized middleware object keep "forgetting" about the actual code that is executed:
# app/middlewares/some_middleware.rb
class SomeMiddleware
def initialize(*args)
#args = args
end
def call(env)
"#{self.class}::Logic".constantize.new(*#args).call(env)
end
class Logic
def initialize(app, additional)
#app = app
#additional = additional
end
def call(env)
[magic]
#app.call(env)
end
end
end
Changes in Logic should be picked up by rails auto reloading on each request.
I think that this actually might become a useful gem!

Answer 2

Building up on #phoet's answer we can actually wrap any middleware with this kind of lazy loading, which I found even more useful:
class ReloadableMiddleware
def initialize(app, middleware_module_name, *middleware_args)
#app = app
#name = middleware_module_name
#args = middleware_args
end
def call(env)
# Lazily initialize the middleware item and call it immediately
#name.constantize.new(#app, *#args).call(env)
end
end
It can be then hooked into the Rails config with any other middleware as its first argument, given as a string:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ReloadableMiddleware, 'YourMiddleware'
Alternatively - I packaged it into a gem called reloadable_middleware, which can be used like so:
Rails.application.config.middleware.use ReloadableMiddleware.wrap(YourMiddleware)

Answer 3

In Rails 6 with the new default Zeitwork code loader, this works for me:
# at the top of config/application.rb, after Bundler.require
# Load the middleware. It will later be hot-reloaded in config.to_prepare
Dir["./app/middleware/*.rb"].each do |middleware|
load middleware
end
Below it in the section that configures your class Application, add hot-reloading in config.to_prepare:
middleware = "#{Rails.root}/app/middleware"
Rails.autoloaders.main.ignore(middleware)
# Run before every request in development mode, or before the first request in production
config.to_prepare do
Dir.glob("#{middleware}/*.rb").each do |middleware|
load middleware
end
end

Answer 4

Can you not simply use shotgun? If I understand your question you want to ensure the environment reloads on every change you make to your code. That is what shotgun will do.