cache_warmer - tool to warm-up HTTP caches

2017-12-18 — 2 min read
#rust  #nginx  #cache  #cache_warmer 

I’ve written a small tool to warm-up HTTP caches, e.g. services like nginx.

Source code as well as compiled releases are available at Github.

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nginx.vim (with better syntax highlighting)

2017-04-14 — 2 min read
#vim  #syntax  #highlight  #nginx  #snippets  #security  #ssl  #http2  #http 

I’m editing nginx configuration files. A lot. Naturally, I’ve tried several plugins for my favorite editor vim - but ran around a lot of problems:

  • Most of the plugins available are outdated.
  • Even syntax highlighting of the current vim plugin distributed with the nginx release has some deficits.
  • I’ve been tired of copying around secure ssl_cipher directives, etc.

So, I’ve created a new, super-cool and mega-advanced vim plugin for nginx!

Ladies and gentlemen: Please welcome, chr4/nginx.vim!

Edit: This plugin was integrated into Vim and Neovim upstream!

Features

The plugin is based on the recent vim plugin distributed with nginx-1.12.0 and additionally features the following syntax improvements:

  • Highlight IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
  • Mark insecure ssl_protocols as errors
  • Inline template syntax highlight for ERB and Jinja
  • Inline syntax highlight for LUA
  • Improve integer matching
  • Syntax highlighting for proxy_next_upstream options
  • Syntax highlighting for sticky options
  • Syntax highlighting for upstream server options
  • More to come!

Furthermore:

  • Remove annoying delimiters, resulting in strange word boundaries
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Nested if workaround for Nginx to allow a specific ip address access to a disabled site

2013-10-29 — 2 min read
#nginx  #devops  #maintenance mode  #maintenance  #nested if  #webapp  #capistrano 

When doing maintenance on a web application, you probably have a custom 503 site, showing your customers that the servers are currently lying on the operating table.

At the dynamic ridesharing service flinc, we touch a certain file on our reverse proxies (e.g. using capistrano deploy:web:disable) when maintenance begins. Nginx then serves a static “we’ve disabled the site for maintenance” site, instead of the actual content.

But wouldn’t it be nice to test your web application before going live for your customers? It sure would. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as a task as you might think, because you cannot nest if directives in an Nginx location and if is evil.

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