Build Restful Api With Nestjs the Right Way

Foreword

If you are new with NestJS or you have been worked with it for several projects, this post is for you. In this article, I'll share with you the real world process to build a Restful API from scratch with NestJS

Okie, let's start. Imagination, we've already have detail specifications.
This is our requirements in this sample:

Create Restful API for a image storage service that allow:

Users can register to the system. They need to verify their account before using it (via email).
Users can only use the system if they have an active account
Users can upload images with png,jpg,jpeg format. The maximum size is 5MB
User's images won't be public unless they created a shared link and share with other people.
User's images can be used on other websites
A user has maximum 100 images.
A system will delete unused image(unused more than 1 year) automatically every weekends.

Infrastructure requirements:

Local : Local Docker
Staging: Run on VM with Docker
Production: Host everything on AWS

First of all, we need to write down what we have to do.

[x] Install NestJS CLI
[x] Setup your dev tools: vscode, config for debug, code linter
[x] Design source code structure: seperate them into layers
[x] Setup your local docker (database only)
[x] Setup your application's configuration
[x] Setup data access layer and configuration
[x] Business Layer: define business models: inputModels, outputModels
[x] Presentation Layer: define controllers
[x] Presentation Layer: integrate data validation from business models
[x] Business Layer: define business service
[x] Presentation Layer: integrate with business layer
[x] Presentation Layer: create swagger - the api document
[x] Persistence Layer: define database's entities, create and run migration scripts, seeds
[x] Persistence Layer: define repositories
[x] Business Layer: integrate repository with business layer
[x] Setup your staging docker: dockerfile, docker compose, setup scripts
[x] Setup your CI/CD flow and setup on your staging
[x] Design and setup AWS Infrastructure

And assume that we already have the high level designs

Step 1 : Install NestJS CLI

npm i -g @nestjs/cli
nest new your-project-name

Step 2: Setup your dev tools

How to debug NestJS in VSCode?

.vscode/launch.json

{
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Debug API",
      "type": "node",
      "program": "${workspaceFolder}/src/application/api/main.ts",
      "runtimeArgs": [
        "-r",
        "ts-node/register",
        "-r",
        "tsconfig-paths/register"
      ],
      "console": "integratedTerminal",
      "request": "launch",
      "skipFiles": ["<node_internals>/**"],
      "outFiles": ["${workspaceFolder}/**/*.js", "!**/node_modules/**"]
    },
    {
      "name": "Debug remote api",
      "type": "node",
      "request": "attach",
      "remoteRoot": "/app",
      "localRoot": "${workspaceFolder}",
      "port": 9229,
      "restart": true,
      "address": "0.0.0.0",
      "skipFiles": ["<node_internals>/**"]
    }
  ]
}