openresty/openresty

★ 13,814CAudience · developerComplexity · 4/5LicenseSetup · moderate

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Extends Nginx
      Runs Lua scripts
      Serves full web apps
    Tech Stack
      C core
      Lua scripting
      Bundled modules
    Use Cases
      Custom APIs
      Auth proxies
      High-traffic sites
    Setup
      Download bundle
      Run make install
      System DNS support
    Community
      Mailing lists
      BSD license

mindmap root((repo)) What it does Extends Nginx Runs Lua scripts Serves full web apps Tech Stack C core Lua scripting Bundled modules Use Cases Custom APIs Auth proxies High-traffic sites Setup Download bundle Run make install System DNS support Community Mailing lists BSD license

Click or tap to explore — scroll the page freely

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Build a high-performance JSON API that runs entirely inside Nginx without a separate application server

USE CASE 2

Add custom authentication and rate-limiting logic to an Nginx reverse proxy using Lua scripts

USE CASE 3

Serve dynamic web pages with database lookups by scripting the web server layer directly

Tech stack

CNginxLuaPerl

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires build dependencies like Perl, dos2unix, and Mercurial before compiling from source, pre-built binary bundles are available for faster setup.

Use freely for any purpose including commercial use, as long as you keep the copyright notice and do not use the project name for endorsement.

In plain English

OpenResty is a packaged version of a web server. Its tagline is "Turning Nginx into a Full-Fledged Scriptable Web Platform." Nginx is a very widely used piece of software that serves websites and routes web traffic. By itself it is fast but limited in what custom logic it can run. OpenResty takes that standard Nginx core and bundles it together with many extra add-on modules and the scripting tools needed to program it, so developers can build full web applications directly inside the server. The key word in the README is "bundle." OpenResty does not rewrite Nginx, it gathers the standard Nginx core, a large set of third-party Nginx modules, and most of the outside software those modules depend on, all into one package. The maintainer, Yichun Zhang (also known as agentzh), notes that because his team develops most of the bundled modules themselves, they can make sure all the pieces work together rather than clashing. For people who just want to use it, the README points to the project's website, where you download the latest bundle as a compressed archive and follow the installation instructions. For maintainers who want to rebuild the bundle from source, the README explains that you check out the source code repository and run a single make command, after installing a few extra build dependencies such as perl, dos2unix, and mercurial. It gives an example set of install commands for one Linux distribution. The README describes one specific added feature in detail. It extends Nginx's resolver setting, which controls how the server looks up domain names, so that it can also read name servers from the system's standard resolv.conf file. There are options to point at the default system file or any custom path, and the feature is noted as unavailable on Windows. The rest of the README is standard project information: links to English and Chinese mailing lists, where to report bugs, and the copyright and full BSD license text. In plain terms, this repository is a ready-to-run web platform that packages Nginx with the modules and scripting support needed to build complete web applications on top of it.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

I have OpenResty installed. Write a Lua script that reads a query parameter from the URL, looks up a value in a Redis cache, and returns a JSON response from an Nginx location block.

Prompt 2

Help me configure OpenResty to add JWT token validation to an existing Nginx upstream proxy without any separate app server.

Prompt 3

Show me how to use the ngx.timer API in OpenResty to run a background job that flushes a queue to a database every 5 seconds.

Prompt 4

Write an OpenResty Lua handler that rate-limits requests per IP address using a shared ngx.shared.DICT counter.

Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

← openresty on gitmyhub — every repo by this author, as a profile.

Verify against the repo before relying on details.