Hi guys, i'm new to this forum (already introduced myself ^^).

I'm writing a nginx handler module and i need to load a file in a server directive inside the config, let's assume it's something like:

server {
...
mymodule-ruleset /etc/nginx/mymodule-rules.json;
...
}

So i have a server structure like:

typedef struct {
...
ngx_str_t ruleset;
...
}
ngx_mymodule_srv_conf_t;

I initialize the ruleset attribute inside the merge_srv_conf handler:

ngx_conf_merge_str_value( conf->ruleset_path, prev->ruleset_path, DEFAULT_RULESET_PATH );

( Where DEFAULT_RULESET_PATH is a constant #defined my me ).

The problem is, i have to load this file only once for server directive, but the user could ignore the mymodule-ruleset using its default value, so i can't use an handler to load it (it could be never called).

Where's the best place to load this file? In the postconfiguration handler ? If so, how do i retrieve the srv_conf_t inside the postconfiguration handler ?

Thanks for your time, i'm new to nginx developing and i'm finding some trouble to understand its structure.

PS: I've already read the guides specified in the wiki, but there's nothing so specific.