Generic NestJs Backend

This is a generic nestjs backend that can be used to create a backend for any project - from high performance, multi-tenant APIs to basic B2C apps and any CRUD application in between.

It can be deployed anywhere that you can deploy a docker container, and hooked up to any postgres database provider. It also includes instructions and configuration for easy local debugging.

Features

• PassportJs User authentication (using JWTs, refresh tokens, etc.)
• Creating users and organizations (i.e. multi tenant support)
• Creating and issuing API keys with attached scopes
• Transactional email using resend

Tools used

• Nest.js as the server framework (using fastify under the hood)
• prisma + postgres as the database
• docker for local development
• passport.js for authentication
• jest for testing
• eslint for linting
• prettier for formatting

How to work on the API locally

If you're using vscode, you can use the Start Debug Server config, which will:

1. spin up the database and adminer containers
2. Start the API in dev mode (i.e. hot reload)
3. Spin down the containers when you kill the debugger

Otherwise, just run docker compose up db adminer to spin up the database and adminer containers, and then run npm run start:dev to start the API in dev mode (and docker compose down to spin down the containers when you're done).

Running the local postgres docker container

These instructions are cribbed from here.

1. Download the latest docker desktop release.
2. Run the following command to pull the latest images and then start the container:

docker compose up db

To build everything, omit db, which will spin up the server and adminer db UI, all in the docker container. To include adminer but not turn on the server in the container, add adminer (i.e. docker compose up db adminer).

If you need to rebuild a container, run the following command:

docker compose up --build # omit container name to rebuild all

To remove old containers:

docker compose down # removes all containers
docker compose down --volumes # Remove containers and volumes

Updating the prisma database schema

See best practices from prisma here.

Overview:

1. Make changes to the schema in prisma/schema.prisma.
2. Start the local database container (see above).
3. run npm run prisma:debug to test the change on the local database (or run npx prisma db push).
4. Keep making changes until you're happy with them, using the prisma:debug command to test them.
5. Once you're happy with them, you can git stash to stash the changes you made to the schema and run prisma:debug once more go go back to what you had. Then git stash pop to get the changes back (which you know work, due to your prototyping in steps 1-4).
6. Finally, run npm run prisma:dev (or npx prisma migrate --name) create a migration that creates the changes. You can skip step 5, but that will create drift in the database that will force you to reset it completely.