1. Development

Prerequisites

A C compiler must be installed that meets the ISO C Standard (C99), such as gcc.
On macOS, the C compiler installed by XCode works fine.

1. Install an IDE

This project can be developed in a basic manner with Visual Studio Code and the C/C++ Extension Pack.
Alternatively, a more specialist compiler such as CLion can be used, with better debugging features.

2. Configure

First run the base configure script, and accept the default NGINX version:

./configure

Select these options to enable Perl tests to run and to enable debugging of the C code in CLion:

DYNAMIC_MODULE=n
NGINX_DEBUG=y

3. Make

Whenever the code in the module changes, run this command to rebuild NGINX:

make

4. Make Install

Pre-creating the nginx folder for development is recommended.
This enables nginx to be run as your own user account, which works better later when debugging:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/nginx
sudo chown yourusername /usr/local/nginx

Whenever you want to update the local system after building code, do a make install.
This deploys an entire NGINX system under the /usr/local/nginx folder:

make install

5. Run NGINX Locally

Finally deploy the nginx.conf development configuration and start NGINX locally:

cp ./resources/localhost/nginx.conf /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx

6. Debug Code

To perform printf debugging you can add ngx_log_error statements to the C code and then look at NGINX output.
Once nginx is running, select Run / Attach to Process, and choose the nginx worker process.
Then set breakpoints, after which you can step through code to check variable state carefully.

7. Act as a Client

You can run curl requests against the nginx system in the same manner as a web or mobile client:

ACCESS_TOKEN='xxx'
curl -i -X GET http://localhost:8080/api \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN"