The ngx_lua module
Similar in intent to the included perl module, the third-party ngx_lua module was made to cover use cases that couldn't be solved with configuration alone. Due to its embeddable design and coroutine (green threading) implementation, Lua serves this purpose well because it doesn't block an entire worker as the perl module can.
The OpenResty project (https://openresty.org/) is the official source of ngx_lua and provides a bundle of NGINX, ngx_lua, a Lua interpreter, plus a number of third-party modules that are useful for turning NGINX into an application server. This is an alternative to the installation instructions detailed in Chapter 1, Installing NGINX and Third-Party Modules. After downloading the source, it can be unpacked and installed with the standard ./configure; make; make install command. Here is an example session disabling a number of extra modules, and placing the whole installation under /opt/resty:
$ ./configure \ --prefix=/opt/resty \ -...
