Inorder to make a simple UI for editing nginx.conf. I need a way to edit
nginx.conf without having to open it up in a text editor. Does nginx
have an
api that i can use to edit information that is inside nginx.conf. This
will
help newbies add virtual host information and edit parameters via a UI.
There’s no API that I know of, unless you want to make your own module.
You
could try having a separate directory for virtual hosts included and use
a
database to store and generate the configuration. It’d be a lot easier
than
trying to interpret the configuration as well.
So I store the configuration in a database or xml file or whatever, and
then
generate the conf file from it.
thank you.
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Ziyad S. [email protected]
wrote:
So I store the configuration in a database or xml file or whatever, and
then generate the conf file from it.
thank you.
Also, using a templating system with a scripting language (say, erb +
ruby
or whatever you’re comfortable with) or the good old m4 may be viable,
and
probably simpler to use and implement. This is very easy and very
convenient
if you have to generate lots of different configurations (say, for n
virtual
hosts, or n virtual hosts on n servers) but which all share a limited
number
of prototype configurations.
Bye
I have a php command line script that builds separate conf files in
one of my servers and does simple string replacement.
Also remember you can use includes so you can leave the main
nginx.conf alone and have it include stuff from another directory you
write out…
nginx.conf file in inf format or any other template based format would
have
been the easiest thing to do. perhaps future version of nginx can go
down
this route.
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Ziyad S. [email protected]
wrote:
nginx.conf file in inf format or any other template based format would have been the easiest thing to do. perhaps future version of nginx can go down this route.
I advocate the templating way… but I hope it doesn’t get into nginx
properly. Managing the generation of it’s own configuration files is
generally a bad idea… then why not make coffee as well? 
agree that hierarchy in inf will be ugly.
you have to be a guru in regular expressions to create a UI for the
current
nginx configuration format. with xml, json yaml etc their are plenty of
libraries that can read and right them easily.
Or Nginx can provide an api that i can use to read and write nginx.conf
files. that’s for Igor to decide.
json is great for interchange but i don’t think it’s a decent readable
syntax.
xml really is king there, still, imho.
anyway - you could take the C code that parses the nginx configuration
and make a PHP module or something out of it 
Why would you want a UI anyway? Unfortunately, to be a web developer,
you will have to have some kind of understanding of a few things like a
server-side language, SQL, webserver configs, javascript, maybe CSS,
etc. A UI is avoiding the problem. If you find the nginx configs to
complicated (and I definitely don’t), then maybe the answer is a
suggestion to change the configs for readability, not scriptability.
the syntax right now is great. very structured and simple. (my only
complaint is how location blocks work, partly is syntax and partly is
just how it works) otherwise i think it is great.
anything can be scripted and anything can have a UI thrown onto it.
i don’t see how inf or xml or anything would make it any easier to
have to make a UI for different location blocks, rewrite rules, other
complex, and other freeform, non-cookie-cutter kind of configuration
items.
besides, infs are one-dimensional, creating a hierarchy on that would
be ugly and hard to read.