Preface

NGINX Cookbook covers the basics of configuring NGINX as a web server for use with common web frameworks such as WordPress and Ruby on Rails, through to utilization as a reverse proxy. Designed as a go-to reference guide, this book will give you practical answers based on real-world deployments to get you up and running quickly.

Recipes have also been provided for multiple SSL configurations, different logging scenarios, practical rewrites, and multiple load balancing scenarios. Advanced topics include covering bandwidth management, Docker container usage, performance tuning, OpenResty, and the NGINX Plus commercial features.

By the time you've read this book, you will be able to adapt and use a wide variety of NGINX implementations to solve any problems you have.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Let's Get Started, goes through some of the basics of NGINX as a refresher. It's aimed as an entry point so that there's no assumed knowledge when we move onto some of the more complex structures.

Chapter 2, Common PHP Scenarios, covers examples of the more common PHP scenarios and how to implement them with NGINX. The readers will learn how to configure NGINX and how to deploy a basic site.

Chapter 3, Common Frameworks, covers non-PHP-based frameworks. It will help the readers to understand and implement all of the common non-PHP-based platforms via NGINX.

Chapter 4, All About SSLs, covers installing the various SSL certificates via NGINX and also covers the configuration required to tweak it for certain scenarios.

Chapter 5, Logging, explains that monitoring for errors and access patterns are fundamental to running a server.

Chapter 6, Rewrites, covers how rewrites work and also specific implementations of many of the common scenarios. It will be full of specific, practical examples based on real-world scenarios.

Chapter 7, Reverse Proxy, covers a basic proxy with specific examples of caching and content expiry. This chapter will explain how to configure NGINX as a reverse proxy, content caching, monitoring cache status, microcaching, and many more important scenarios.

Chapter 8, Load Balancing, talks about the load balancing components of NGINX and how to implement them for specific scenarios. In this chapter, you will learn the three important load balancing techniques—round-robin, least connection, and hash-based load balancing.

Chapter 9, Advanced Features, covers some of the lesser used features of NGINX, why they're available, and then how to implement them. This chapter includes authentication, WebDAV, bandwidth management, connection limiting, and header modification with NGINX.

Chapter 10, Docker Containers, runs you through real-world scenarios of using NGINX within a container. It will provide basic Dockerfile configs for common scenarios.

Chapter 11, Performance Tuning, is designed to build upon the existing NGINX configurations and enable specific performance enhancements.

Chapter 12, OpenResty, introduces the concept of OpenResty, a combination of NGINX, Lua scripting, and several additional third-party modules all packaged up ready to use.

Chapter 13, NGINX Plus – The Commercial Offering, shows the readers what features are in the Plus version, as well as how to implement them.

What you need for this book

The following is the list of software you require to go through the recipes covered in this book:

• NGINX
• PHP 7
• Ubuntu/CentOS/RHEL

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at beginner-to-medium developers who are just getting started with NGINX. It assumes that they already understand the basics of how a web server works and how basic networking works.

Sections

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it…, How it works…, There's more…, and See also). To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

Getting ready

This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.

How to do it…

This section contains the steps required to follow the recipe.

How it works…

This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.

There's more…

This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.

See also

This section provides helpful links to other useful information for the recipe.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning. Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "To install the latest NGINX release, add the NGINX mainline repository by adding the following to /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo."

A block of code is set as follows:

server {
      listen 80;
      server_name server.yourdomain.com; 
      access_log /var/log/nginx/log/host.access.log combined;

      location / {
          root /var/www/html;
          index index.html; 
      }
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

mkdir -p /var/www/vhosts

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "As our configuration is very simple, we can simply accept the default settings and hit Create."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Note

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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