NGINX Cookbook

How to do it...

We'll start with using one of the most basic functions in OpenResty and Lua, which is the content_by_lua_block block directive. This allows us to insert Lua code directly in line with our NGINX configuration, providing rapid and dynamic changes. The first recipe returns a basic string:

location /simpletest { 
    default_type 'text/plain'; 
    content_by_lua_block { 
        ngx.say('This is a simple test!') 
  } 
} 

If you browse to the URL (or use cURL to make the request), you should simply get This is a simple test as the HTTP response. Running a simple Apache Benchmark against this URL (just to show a baseline performance) shows that it can serve this URL over 20,000 times a second on a modestly resourced VM. While the code isn't overly complex, ...