If you haven’t heard of NestJS then you must pay attention as it is one of the best node.js frameworks that is presently known to build reliable and scalable applications.
Whether you are a full-time developer or an aspiring entrepreneur, JavaScript and NodeJs are two essential tools that your application development requires. Also, you need a reliable application development platform that can help you harness the potential of NodeJS.
And, here comes NestJS. This JavaScript framework has incredible features and a lot to offer. Due to its remarkable set of features, it is currently the most sought-after framework among JS developers.
So, let’s see how you can leverage Nest for React app development.
NestJS And Other JavaScript Solutions
When it comes to backed development, Express.js remains the undisputed leader in the space of JavaScript technology. Consistently, it has given life to several complicated applications. Thus, it is a developer and open-source community favorite for years.
It has been the top backend development service for years, according to “State of JavaScript”. On the other hand, Koa is another backend solution for JS-based application development known for minimalism, and an un-opinionated viewpoint for building web apps.
Similarly, Hapi.js is known for more or less efficiency and minimalism. All of these are popular frameworks that are known for backend efficiency and development ease. While NestJS is known for SPA development. Also, it can serve as a backend to your applications.
NestJS allows you to focus on the server-side and get an opinion on application architecture. It makes NestJS stand differently from other JavaScript frameworks. Thus, it is one of the top choices of almost every ReactJS app development company across the world. Let’s learn more about it.
Application Architecture and Nest
The application architecture of NestJS-based applications is organized modules or a grouping of functionality. Mostly, related to features of the application domain! These modules are special classes annotated with the @Module() decorator.
If you understand Angular application development background, you must be familiar with this concept. Several Nest concepts are inspired by Angular architecture.
For example, you want to create a simple task-tracking REST API with features like user or task management. Thus, your modules for user-related functionalities would be different than task-related functionalities.
Also, you will need a module to serve as the initial point of application for internal data representation and structuring. The Nest will use this module to resolve your application’s dependencies and consolidate feature relatability.
It is called a root module. That’s how tracking solutions are organized. Before you hire ReactJS developers, you must ensure they know complete Nest architecture.
What Problem does Nest solve?
The flexibility of frameworks like Express, Koa, and Hapi is incredible. You’re free to build your app in any number of ways, using the many third-party libraries at your disposal. Nearly every project I’ve been involved with has had its unique way of structuring backend services using at least one of these frameworks.
However, there are cases where having some structure from the get-go is beneficial. Maintaining consistency across a large code base is challenging enough, and doubly so when the team tasked to maintain the code is small.
With undoubted frameworks like Express, there are many ways you can decide how to organize your code. Deciding which one to use eats up valuable time that could be spent working on features.
It can also be challenging to stay consistent with the original decision over time, especially if developers come and go from the team. Right out of the box, Nest provides a modular approach to organizing code that is flexible enough to extend but still imposes structure.
And while it may not directly compete against other frameworks such as Express, keep in mind that they do include it as part of their core framework. What this means for a developer is that you can leverage the vast array of third-party libraries available for the underlying framework (and its APIs) while still using Nest.
The main problem Nest for ReactJS apps addresses are outlined in its documentation: how to build efficient, scalable, and loosely coupled web applications? Essentially what it boils down to is architecture; just like how React and Angular are driving frontend application architectures.
Awesome Features of Nest
Nest for React app, just might be one of the most popular open-source libraries out there. With over 28,000 Github stars and nearly 300k weekly downloads on NPM, it’s clear that this library does some pretty cool things! And we’re here to break down a few of those features for you below.
TypeScript has advantages over writing plain JavaScript, including a type system and excellent developer tooling. Nest supports (and encourages) the use of TypeScript and supports pure JavaScript for added flexibility.
There are many command line tools available in Nest. These tools come preinstalled and can be used to create new projects, add new components, update dependencies, and run your app.
TypeORM is one of the most sought-after object-relational mapping (ORM) tools in the world, so it only seemed natural for me to use this with my application. Besides being able to work seamlessly alongside Nest – is that it has a simple interface but can still provide great benefits through its advanced querying abilities.
Though it provides standard HTTP-based REST APIs, Nest also supports other technologies such as GraphQL, WebSockets, GRPC, and MQTT. This makes it easy to create microservices that use different tools when appropriate.
Automated tests are an essential aspect of any piece of production software. Nest has compatibility with popular unit testing frameworks like Jest but is essentially test framework-agnostic. It also provides a testing package that enables developers to use Mock Nest modules and take advantage of Nest’s dependency injection system.
Wrapping Up
Choosing the right technology to solve a problem can feel more like an art than science sometimes. Questions such as Which technology is the team most familiar with? often come first before deciding on what tool will work best for the job at hand. Still, there are exceptions – especially when dealing with new technologies and frameworks like ReactJS services and others that may not be widely adopted yet.
That being said, you should make up your own opinion by reading through documents and exploring examples of how they were implemented. It would also be great if we could talk about Nest from different perspectives –
Until next time – thanks for reading this update!