NGinx - Count requests for a particular URL patter

Question

I wanted to count the number of requests to a particular url pattern. Not sure how this is done in NGinx.

Is this possible:

When an request to the url pattern comes, we serve that request first. Then NGinx makes another request asynchronously to a server which counts the impression. NGinx does not wait for the response of this request.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You may try this module

https://github.com/theromis/ngx_counter_zone

very close to your request

Answer 2

You can use the post_action directive to trigger a sub_request after the main request is complete.

Useful for the sort of logging you have in mind.

** OCT 2016 UPDATE **

The post_action directive has been removed from the Nginx documentation and while it still appears to work, usage is inadvisable. Caveat Emptor!