Is it possible to run (and check) Nginx rewrite rules without running the whole web server?

I want to get as close as I can to "unit testing" Nginx rewrite rules. How close can one get to doing this? Is there a way to run the request rewriting module without running the entire web server? Can I embed the Nginx server in a process running Ruby or Python or, if I have to, Java? What tricks can you think of?