经过简化之后，web服务器可以被看作是一个接收请求并输出响应的函数。因此，如果您将web服务器视为一个功能，您可以将其组织成几个部分，并将它们分离为更小的功能，以便它们的组合将是原始功能。

中间件是可以与其他函数组合的较小函数，其明显的好处是可以重用它们。

Middleware is a subset of chained functions called by the Express js routing layer before the user-defined handler is invoked. Middleware functions have full access to the request and response objects and can modify either of them. The middleware chain is always called in the exact order in which it has been defined, so it is vital for you to know exactly what a specific piece of middleware is doing. Once a middleware function finishes, it calls the next function in the chain by invoking its next argument as function. After the complete chain gets executed,the user request handler is called.

简单点，伙计!

注意:答案与ExpressJS内置中间件用例有关，但是中间件有不同的定义和用例。

From my point of view, middleware acts as utility or helper functions but its activation and use is fully optional by using the app.use('path', /* define or use builtin middleware */) which don't wants from us to write some code for doing very common tasks which are needed for each HTTP request of our client like processing cookies, CSRF tokens and ..., which are very common in most applications so middleware can help us do these all for each HTTP request of our client in some stack, sequence or order of operations then provide the result of the process as a single unit of client request.

例子:

接受客户端请求并根据他们的请求提供响应是web服务器技术的本质。

Imagine if we are providing a response with just "Hello, world!" text for a GET HTTP request to our webserver's root URI is very simple scenario and don't needs anything else, but instead if we are checking the currently logged-in user and then responding with "Hello, Username!" needs something more than usual in this case we need a middleware to process all the client request metadata and provide us the identification info grabbed from the client request then according to that info we can uniquely identify our current user and it is possible to response to him/her with some related data.

希望它能帮助到别人!

经过简化之后，web服务器可以被看作是一个接收请求并输出响应的函数。因此，如果您将web服务器视为一个功能，您可以将其组织成几个部分，并将它们分离为更小的功能，以便它们的组合将是原始功能。

中间件是可以与其他函数组合的较小函数，其明显的好处是可以重用它们。

在非常基本的术语中，如果我想这样解释它，我是从traversymedia youtube频道express速成课程中学到的。 中间件是一个函数，它在你像这样调用路由之后执行。

var logger = function(req, res, next){
   console.log('logging...');
   next();
}

app.use(logger);

这个记录器函数在你每次刷新页面时执行这意味着你可以在页面呈现后写任何你需要做的事情任何api调用，重置基本上任何事情。把这个中间件放在你的路由功能之前，中间件的顺序非常重要，否则它就无法工作

中间件是在输入/源产生输出后在中间执行的函数，该输出可以是最终输出，也可以被下一个中间件使用，直到循环完成。

它就像一个经过流水线的产品，在移动过程中不断修改，直到完成、评估或被拒绝。

中间件期望处理某些值(即参数值)，并且基于某些逻辑，中间件将调用或不调用下一个中间件，或将响应发送回客户端。

如果您仍然不能理解中间件的概念，那么它在某种程度上类似于Decorator或命令链模式。