NGINX Has a Free API: Here's How to Use It for Load Balancer Automation

NGINX Plus has a commercial API, but open-source NGINX provides powerful automation through its configuration system and the stub_status module. Combined with tools like NGINX Unit, you get a true REST API for your web server. Why Automate NGINX? Dynamic upstream management without reloads Monitor connections, requests, and response codes Automate SSL certificate rotation Build self-healing load balancers Getting Started: Status Monitoring Enable stub_status in nginx.conf: server { listen 8080 ; location /nginx_status { stub_status ; allow 127.0 .0.1 ; deny all ; } } curl -s http://localhost:8080/nginx_status # Active connections: 42 # server accepts handled requests # 7368 7368 10993 # Reading: 0 Writing: 1 Waiting: 41 Parse NGINX Metrics with Python import requests import re def get_nginx_metrics ( status_url = ' http://localhost:8080/nginx_status ' ): text = requests . get ( status_url ). text active = int ( re . search ( r ' Active connections: (\d+) ' , text ). group ( 1 )) accept