Here is comporoute, a ring handler without any macro magic, aimed at composability and extensibility.
Even though it's in early alpha state it has precise docstrings already. It has a feature called inner middleware to solve the issue you are having. You may (and should) use it only for what you need it for and leave the rest to Compojure.
Given your Compojure handler/app is called compojure
:
(defn demo-middleware
"A test midleware associng :bar to :foo of request"
[handler]
(fn [request]
(handler (assoc request :foo :bar))))
(defn demo-handler [request]
(ring.util.response/response
(str "id is " (get-in request [:params :id]) " "
":foo is" (:foo request))))
(def app
(comporoute.core/router
[["/demo-with-middleware"
[demo-middleware ;; all handlers in this vector are
;; wrapped via demo-middleware
["/:id" :demo-with demo-handler]]]
["/demo-without-middleware"
["/:id" :demo-without demo-handler]]]
:page-not-found compojure)
At the shell
curl http://localhost:8080/demo-without-middleware/1234
id is 1234 :foo is
curl http://localhost:8080/demo-with-middleware/1234
id is 1234 :foo is :bar
# Everything else will be handled by compojure.
Dependency vector [comporoute "0.2.0"]