# Conventional defaults Sails comes bundled with a suite of conventional HTTP middleware, ready to use. Naturally, you may choose to disable, override, append to, or rearrange it, but the pre-installed stack is perfectly acceptable for most apps in development or production. Below is a list of the standard HTTP middleware functions that come bundled in Sails, in the order they execute every time the server receives an incoming HTTP request: HTTP Middleware Key | Purpose :------------------------ |:------------ _cookieParser_ * | Parses the cookie header into a clean object for use in subsequent middleware and your application code. _session_ * | Creates or loads a unique session object (`req.session`) for the requesting user agent based on their cookies and your [session configuration](https://sailsjs.com/documentation/reference/configuration/sails-config-session). **bodyParser** | Parses parameters and binary upstreams (for streaming file uploads) from the HTTP request body using [Skipper](https://github.com/balderdashy/skipper). **compress** | Compresses response data using gzip/deflate. See [`compression`](https://github.com/expressjs/compression) for details. **poweredBy** | Attaches an `X-Powered-By` header to outgoing responses. _router_ * | This is where the bulk of your app logic gets applied to any given request. In addition to running `"before"` handlers in hooks (e.g. csrf token enforcement) and some internal Sails logic, this routes requests using your app's explicit routes (in [`sails.config.routes`](https://sailsjs.com/documentation/reference/configuration/sails-config-routes)) and/or route blueprints. _www_ * | Serves static files—usually images, stylesheets, scripts—in your app's "public" folder (configured in [`sails.config.paths`](https://github.com/balderdashy/sails/blob/master/docs/PAGE_NEEDED.md), conventionally [`.tmp/public/`](https://github.com/balderdashy/sails/blob/master/docs/PAGE_NEEDED.md)) using Connect's [static middleware](http://www.senchalabs.org/connect/static.html). **favicon** | Serves the [browser favicon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon) for your app if one is provided as `/assets/favicon.ico`. ###### Legend: + `*` : The middleware with an asterisk (*) should _almost never_ need to be modified or removed. Please only do so if you really understand what you're doing.