This is an example (backend only, no JS) web application written with the amazing lua-http module. It is made without a framework. Instead I've used a few of my favorite modules.

The website is a portal where one can register an account and write posts. Posts can receive comments, be edited, added to favorites and deleted. Users can change their password, display name and e-mail.

Sessions are handled via cookies and an internal sessions state. The application also has csrf protection.

Everything is written as simple as possible and the code is pretty short. Globals are used quite a bit, so that the state doesn't have to be pushed around via function arguments (for the sake of simplicity). The main file is called server.lua.

lua-http handles everything related to requests; cqueues allows the code to run without blocking; etlua is used for template rendering; cqueues-pgsql talks to PostgreSQL; router does the (you've guesed it) routing and luafilesystem checks for template modifications for autoreloading (while developing).

Icons are from http://adamwhitcroft.com/batch/