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Nestjs-BFF OVERVIEW

Status

This library is currently 'on ice' and is no longer being activley maintained at this time. However, it may still server as a useful as a reference to others on how to build a production ready app around the NestJS platform. Also, it is anticiapted that at some indeterminate point in the fututure, the library will be thawed, updated, and work will continue.

If anyone is interested in taking a leading role in the maintenance and update of this library, please contact me to dicsuss.

Overview

NestJS-BFF is a full-stack TypeScript solution, and starter project. It is intended for developers who are looking to fast-track building a strongly typed, enterprise-grade, modern NodeJs application, with supporting tooling.

This implementation uses the BFF pattern, leveraging NestJS as the primary framework for the backend. The frontend example is in Angular, although any client-side Javascript framework can easily be used, including React, or Vue js.

Contents

This is a Mono-repo project containing a Backend, companion CLI, Frontend, and companion NPM packages. Follow the README navigation links for details on each of these. The core infrastructure is contained in NPM packages, so that projects build using this boilerplate can easily benefit from future updates though a simple NPM update command.

Installation & Usage

See the DevOps documentation and folder for instructions and scripts to install, run, and maintain nestjs-bff applications

Key Features

• Strongly Typed backend, leveraging the power of TypeScript, NestJS and Express
• DDD style layered architecture with Application Services and composable Domain objects
• Comprehensive authentication and authorization system in-the-box
• JWT Authentication for robust and flexible security
• Social Login with Facebook (complete), Google, and Twitter (under development), using the more secure Authorization Code Grant flow
• Secured-by-default with 'allow list' approach
• Flexible Caching leveraging the powerful cache-manager library
• Repository Pattern in-the-box for simple data-access
• MongoDB Migrations for easy database seeding and management
• Winston and Console Logger Service in-the-box
• Configuration pattern simple and strongly types
• e2e Testing pattern leveraging Jest

Structure

• Frontend Frontend Layer example, built with Angular
• Global Global Layer layer that can be shared between the backend and the frontend
• Backend Hosting Layer for exposing Application and Domain Services over a multiple transports
• Backend Application Services Layer for composing Domain Services
• Backend Domain Services Layer for encapsulating core domain logic
• Backend Infrastructure Layer packages, for building and supporting the layered architecture

Architecture Overview

Developer Benefits

There are a number of benefits that make NestJs and Angular a very compelling web development stack:

• Core technologies NestJS and Angular are both versatile and highly compatible frameworks, that provide a great developer experience
• Consistent technology and development patterns for both frontend and backend development
  • Results in significant increase in development efficiency
  • TypeScript language for both the backend and frontend
  • Strongly type on both the backend and frontend
  • Leverages the Node JavaScript framework for both backend and frontend development
  • Incredibly similar architecture and design patterns
• Backend framework can be leveraged for other execution contexts, including CLI (example included) or even Desktop
• Leverages fully open source technology
• Hosting options are broad, and flexible, with multiple value-options, and broad native cloud hosting support (including Heroku)

Background

NestJS is a fantastic project, and a pleasure to develop with. However, it is a framework by design, and not a complete production-ready web-application solution. Features such as logging, configuration management, data-base migrations, and even authentication need to be learned, assembled, and configured before they can be used.

This project aims to provide an enterprise-ready web-application skeleton, out-of-the-box, and built on top of the nest-js framework.

Notes

• The Backend can run independently from the CLI
• The CLI requires the Backend to compile and run
• The Frontend can run independently, but requires the Backend to be running to complete requests, including for authentication

Contributions

Contributions are not only welcome, but encouraged. Please help make this better! See the Contributions Guide for details.

Attributions

See the Attributions section.

Companion Libraries

This library is part of a collection of companion tools and libraries under the AbleStack umbrella. All of these libraries share the common goal:

Helping small teams and solo-developers build big ideas rapidly and affordably

To achieve these goals, the following principles are applied:

• Selectively leverage existing open source tools and libraries, where, high quality, open source tools and libraries where possible
  • Curate usage examples, and guidance where available, and create where not available
• Prioritize technology choices that embrace open source
  • PostgreSQL over MSSQL is an example of this
• Avoid technology choices that could result in hosting vendor lock-in
  • ApolloGraphQL over AWS Amplify is an example of this
• Automate wherever possible, from development, through testing, to deployment, monitoring, and maintenance
  • Codegen from strongly types schemas is a good example of this.
• Where needed, develop high quality, open source tools and libraries to augment and automate existing open source tooling and libraries

Readme Navigation

Further details on each of the systems contained in this project can be found via the following links:

• Overview
• Frontend
• Backend
• CLI
• DevOps