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OpenResty

OpenResty turns the NGINX server into a web app server.

OpenResty gives us additional directives which let us script behaviour with the lua language:

• content_by_lua
• init_by_lua
• rewrite_by_lua
• access_by_lua

The content_by_lua directive allows to run arbitrary Lua code:

location / {
	content_by_lua 'ngx.say("<p>hello, world</p>")';
}

For more complex logic there is content_by_lua_file.

location /by_file {
    default_type text/html;
    lua_code_cache off;
    content_by_lua_file ./lua/hello_world.lua;
}

lua_code_cache disables the caches, so it's possible to live reload in development.

The init_by_lua directive allows to run initialization code during the nginx start up up. It is being used for importing and defining libraries or modules that are used in our request handlers.

init_by_lua '
    cjson = require("cjson") -- global variable
'

location / {
    content_by_lua '
        local message = cjson.decode({hello="world"})
        ngx.say(message)
    ';
}

There is also init_by_lua_file.

ngx.location.capture allows to trigger an internal request.

local res = ngx.location.capture("/some-path")

The res contains response's status, header, and body.

Pass arguments to requests:

local options = {
    method = ngx.HTTP_POST,
    args = { maxsize = 1000 }
}
local res = ngx.location.capture("/some-path", options)

The ngx request object contains typical request attributes:

local headers = ngx.req.get_headers()
local cookie = headers["Cookie"]
local etag = headers["Etag"]
local host = headers["Host"]

local body = ngx.req.read_body()
local method = ngx.req.get_method
local querystring_params = ngx.req.get_uri_args()
local post_params = ngx.req.get_post_args()

For the response, there is NO ngx.res.body() method. Use ngx.print or ngx.say. The latter appends the newline at the end \n.

ngx.print("Hello world")
ngx.say("Hello world")

Send JSON response

ngx.say(cjson.encode({a=1,b=2}))