Native Module Reference

This page is the front door to the native nginz module family.

Read it when you want the full story in plain words: how nginz protects traffic, shapes requests, connects to data systems, coordinates workers, exposes visibility, and extends behavior at the edge.

Use the links below as a natural table of contents. Each category is one part of the platform story, and together they explain how the native module set fits into a real deployment.

The reference pages themselves answer four practical questions quickly:

  1. What problem does this module solve?
  2. When is it actually useful?
  3. What does the nginx.conf shape look like?
  4. Which other nginz modules work well with it?

Security and identity

Security is where most nginz deployments begin: first establish trust, then decide who is allowed through. ACME and Let’s Encrypt handles certificate issuance, JWT Authentication validates bearer tokens, OpenID Connect runs the browser login flow, Web Application Firewall inspects requests for attack patterns, and nftables IP Policy blocks or allows clients at the IP layer. Together, these modules define the security envelope before traffic reaches your applications.

Traffic control and resilience

Once traffic is trusted, nginz decides how to steer it safely. Canary Routing releases changes gradually, Circuit Breaker stops repeated backend failure from cascading, Rate Limiting protects services from overload and abuse, Dynamic Upstreams changes backend membership without reloads, and Upstream Balancer keeps sticky routing aligned with live peer health. This category is the operational control layer for live traffic.

Discovery, data, and transformation

After routing decisions are in place, nginz can also become the place where data is discovered, validated, fetched, and reshaped. Consul Integration connects service discovery to runtime config, Redis Integration gives nginz direct access to hot data and counters, PostgREST-compatible PostgreSQL API exposes database-backed APIs, GraphQL Gateway enforces GraphQL request policy, JSON Schema Validation rejects bad payloads early, and JSON Response Transform trims upstream JSON to the shape clients actually need.

Cache and coordination

High-performance edge systems need both cache control and cross-worker coordination. Cache Tags groups cached responses by business meaning, Cache Purge API invalidates those groups safely, and Worker Events broadcasts state changes across workers without polling. This is the category that keeps distributed edge state coherent.

Observability and diagnostics

Reliable systems need to explain what they are doing. Health Checks reports readiness and probes backends, Prometheus Metrics exports request and latency telemetry, Request ID gives each request a trace handle, Echoz Debug Output helps inspect live request data, and Hello provides the simplest possible smoke-test endpoint. This category is where operators confirm the system is healthy and understandable.

Runtime and ecosystem

NJS (JavaScript) Orchestration extends nginz with request-time logic and subrequest composition, while WeChat Pay Gateway shows how native modules can package a specific external protocol as a first-class edge capability. This last category is the expansion layer: the place where nginz stops being only a traffic system and becomes a programmable application edge.