Before I read this article (having just seen the title) I assumed this was going to be covering a reverse proxy system, and started pondering how I would implement something like this myself. A very basic approach probably would be simpler than middleware, but the question I got stuck on was whether or not a reverse proxy would need to be "smart" about the content it was limiting. That is, would it need to be programmed to parse requests and understand what the intention and purpose was of each request?

For example, limiting traffic by IP address via reverse proxy is simple, but it seems like it would be more difficult to limit by request priority.

I was surprised when the article revealed it was middleware, and suddenly that made a lot more sense and seemed easier because it no-longer requires duplicating application logic to understand the content of requests. Middleware definitely seems like the better approach to me after these considerations.

What kinds of methods would one use to solve the problem of needing to parse and understand incoming requests using the reverse proxy method?