NGINX Cookbook, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5. Programmability and Automation

5.0 Introduction

Programmability refers to the ability to interact with something through programming. The API for NGINX Plus provides just that: the ability to interact with the configuration and behavior of NGINX Plus through an HTTP interface. This API provides the ability to reconfigure NGINX Plus by adding or removing upstream servers through HTTP requests. The key-value store feature in NGINX Plus enables another level of dynamic configuration—you can utilize HTTP calls to inject information that NGINX Plus can use to route or control traffic dynamically. This chapter will touch on the NGINX Plus API and the key-value store module exposed by that same API.

Configuration management tools automate the installation and configuration of servers, which is an invaluable utility in the age of the cloud. Engineers of large-scale web applications no longer need to configure servers by hand; instead, they can use one of the many configuration management tools available. With these tools, engineers only need to write configurations and code once to produce many servers with the same configuration in a repeatable, testable, and modular fashion. This chapter covers a few of the most popular configuration management tools available and how to use them to install NGINX and template a base configuration. These examples are extremely basic but demonstrate how to get an NGINX server started with each platform.

5.1 NGINX Plus API

Problem

You have ...