NGINX, Inc., the engine delivering sites and applications for the modern web, today announced a preview release of nginScript, a new technology that combines JavaScript with NGINX to enable dynamic application delivery. This will give developers and application owners a powerful new tool to shape traffic and optimize the application experience.

The release of nginScript gives developers and application owners a whole new way of crafting the user experience and shaping the interactions between inbound requests and the response delivered, using familiar tools and the ability to respond in real-time. NGINX has chosen JavaScript as the programming language for this new capability due to its ubiquity, flexibility, ease of use, and deep level of familiarity for NGINX users.

With today’s preview release, which was first showcased on stage at this year’s nginx.conf 2015, the NGINX community will be able experiment with nginScript, explore the new capabilities it unlocks, and provide feedback and guidance on the future direction of the project.

“NGINX is committed to becoming the ideal application delivery platform for all modern web applications,” said Igor Sysoev, creator and developer of NGINX. “We believe in providing a suite of lightweight, actionable and non-prescriptive solutions in order to give our community full choice and flexibility, while supporting a wide range of ecosystem partners. By adding rich scripting capabilities and control to the delivery of experiences, we believe that NGINX makes it possible for application developers and owners to further ensure truly flawless delivery.”

Building advanced scripting capabilities directly into NGINX will enable greater control over the response between inbound user requests to your application(s) and the response sent back. This creates a new layer of control for developers that, when fully released in production, will enable:

  • Rapid response to issues in your applications — Fix bugs, close off vulnerabilities, or address changes in business rules. With nginScript, you will be able to inspect all aspects of a request and response, and modify data or block transactions. You can control authentication, and rate-limit and queue requests to enforce business policies.
  • Consolidate functions across applications — Streamline applications and microservices by moving repeated functionality out of applications, such as authentication and security policies, and into the NGINX-powered delivery platform.
  • Modify or personalize the user experience — NGINX users will be able to use nginScript to respond to specific inbound requests and data points to implement A/B testing, to prioritize more valuable visitors, to enable sophisticated caching, and even to implement content personalization.
  • Richer control over traffic — JavaScript’s expressive language provides no limit to the potential sophistication of nginScript rules.
  • Defend against denial-of-service or request overruns — Monitor request volumes across a cluster using a shared database, and dynamically respond to abusive users by rate-limiting or denying requests.

Adoption of NGINX has grown considerably in recent months. NGINX is now the #1 web server in the top 100,000 websites, with nearly half of the world’s busiest sites using NGINX to deliver their experiences to billions of users. NGINX, Inc. continues to invest heavily in both its open source and commercially supported tools to make flawless application delivery easy for everyone – from the smallest, lightest apps up to the world’s largest platforms and experiences.

To learn more about nginScript visit: https://www.nginx.com/blog/launching-nginscript-and-looking-ahead