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https://github.com/jvns/nginx-playground


https://github.com/jvns/nginx-playground

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# nginx playground



This code is running at [nginx-playground.wizardzines.com](https://nginx-playground.wizardzines.com).

There's a [blog post](https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/09/24/new-tool--an-nginx-playground/) that

explains the design.



## mostly unmaintained



I haven't made any changes to this code for a couple of years and I don't

intend to add new features.



I'm open to merging bug fixes though, and if you find a bug I'd like to hear

about it in the issues. 



## things you might want to change



Some things that are specific to my deployment of this code, that you'll

want to remove or change if you make significant changes:



* "a wizard zines project" in the header

* the analytics (grep for `plausible`)

* the `fly.toml`

* the FAQ



## security notes



Might have security vulnerabilities, it gives the user a lot of access, I

personally would only run this software on a machine that I was comfortable

with potentially being compromised. I haven't had any issues that I know of yet

though.



I run the backend and the frontend on separate servers so that if the backend

ever did get compromised, it wouldn't affect the frontend site. You can just

run the frontend on GitHub pages or something.



## development setup



Developing the frontend is straightforward:



```

cd static

python3 -m http.server 8084 # or serve a webserver any other way you want

```



It has the URL of the backend hardcoded so you I work on it without having to run the backend.



To generate the Tailwind CSS: (with the [tailwind standalone CLI](https://tailwindcss.com/blog/standalone-cli))



```

tailwindcss-macos-arm64 --content  'static/*.html,static/*.js' -o static/css/tailwind-classes.css

```



Developing the backend is a bit of a mess. It only works on Linux (because it

depends on bubblewrap), and it's a pain to develop because it requires nginx to

be installed in specific directories and it has to run as root.



Here are setup instructions that worked for me on a fresh Ubuntu 22.10 install:



```bash

sudo apt-get install golang nginx bubblewrap

# install go-httpbin

go install github.com/mccutchen/go-httpbin/v2/cmd/go-httpbin@latest

# just putting go-httpbin in your PATH doesn't work

cp /the/path/to/go-httpbin /usr/bin 

# there has to be an nginx user

useradd -s /bin/false nginx 

# start the server

bash scripts/run-local.sh

```



You can test that it's working with `httpie` like this:



```

http post localhost:8080/run nginx_config=@examples/basic.conf command="http get localhost"

```



There's also a `watch-local.sh` that watches your changes with `entr`.



It should in theory be possible to modify the way `bubblewrap` is invoked to

run without being root (and have a less scary development experience), but I

couldn't figure out how to do it. If you figure out how to make the experience

of working with bubblewrap easier I'd love to hear about it.



Also you could definitely modify this so that it works with a separate nginx

container image and doesn't require you to have nginx installed in your main

filesystem.