django block or redirect all requests

Question

I would like to block or redirect all requests to another service temporarily in django request/response module. However, I do want to do this put a control mechanism at the begining of all service functions. For example there is a sginal request_start which is sent when a request incomes to any restful API. In handler, is it possible to also block these requests or stop django temporarily?

Answer 1

If you want to simply filter requests by context (for example by the URL) or reject all of them, then you can write your own middleware with a process_request method, where you can check for condition(s) and return either None (to continue processing) or HttpResponse with redirect/404/403 (to block processing).

Now, if you want to send signals or perform any other processing, you can do it in another middleware and simply set a proper order in MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES (the "blocking" middleware should be the last).