James Lee

NestJS on Deno?

Can you run Nest in Deno?

Yes.

I’m writing this because google searches aren’t very clear and almost made me believe it won’t work. I almost believed I would have to use a Deno flavored framework that mimics Nestjs (like oak).

However, it’s straight forward to use and arguably simpler in Deno because you can get started without Nest’s CLI and it’s generation requirements. Given that Deno just works with Typescript, there is no build-step. You just import and it works.

Maybe at one point in Deno’s history it did not work, but as of now, it does.

First what is Nest?

I really like it, for those who don’t know, here’s a brief overview.

NestJS is a progressive, extensible Node.js framework for building efficient and scalable server-side applications. It is built with and fully supports TypeScript but is also compatible with JavaScript. NestJS leverages the power of modern JavaScript, combined with the capabilities and flexibility of TypeScript, to create a highly productive and modular development environment.

Key Features of NestJS

  1. Modular Architecture: NestJS encourages a modular approach to application structure, allowing developers to split their codebase into modules. This promotes better organization and reusability of code.

  2. Dependency Injection: It has a powerful built-in Dependency Injection (DI) system that helps manage the lifecycle of dependencies and their relationships, making it easier to write testable, maintainable, and scalable applications.

  3. TypeScript Support: While it can be used with JavaScript, NestJS is designed with TypeScript in mind, providing full type-checking and advanced TypeScript features right out of the box.

  4. Decorator-based Syntax: Inspired by Angular, NestJS uses decorators (e.g., @Module, @Controller, @Injectable, etc.) to define and organize different parts of the application, making the code more readable and declarative.

  5. Built-in Support for Various Transport Layers: NestJS natively supports different types of transport layers like HTTP, WebSockets, and microservices through built-in modules.

  6. Extensive Ecosystem: It provides a rich set of tools and modules that cover various aspects of application development, including authentication, database integration, caching, validation, and more.

  7. Testing: NestJS promotes best practices for testing by providing utilities and patterns for writing unit and end-to-end tests, ensuring your application is reliable and maintainable.

Running a stand alone Nest app in Deno

Initialize the sample project

  1. create a new directory mkdir nest-deno
  2. cd into the directory cd nest-deno
  3. initialize a deno project deno init

Adding the Core Nest dependency

deno add npm:@nestjs/core The deno add command adds to the import map of deno.json. This allows us to import like we’d normally do instead of having to prefix npm: in our imports.

import { NestFactory } from '@nestjs/core'; vs import { NestFactory } from 'npm:@nestjs/core';

Add the sample code into main.ts

import { NestFactory } from '@nestjs/core';

class AppModule {}
const app = await NestFactory.createApplicationContext(AppModule);

Run the app with Deno

Deno init created a task in the deno.json file that allows us to run the app and watch for changes. Run the app with deno task dev.

To avoid having to say yes to the Deno requests x accesss prompts. Update the deno.json file to include the --allow-read and --allow-env flag. Here’s how mine looks like.

{
  "tasks": {
    "dev": "deno run --watch --allow-read --allow-env main.ts"
  },
  "imports": {
    "@nestjs/common": "npm:@nestjs/common@^10.3.9",
    "@nestjs/core": "npm:@nestjs/core@^10.3.9"
  }
}

Testing if Nest’s DI functionality works

  1. Run deno add npm:@nestjs/common to add @nestjs/common to the import map.
  2. Let’s create a service and utilize dependency injection. Update main.ts to look like the following:
import { NestFactory } from '@nestjs/core';
import { Module } from '@nestjs/common';

class HelloService {
  hello() {
    console.log('Hello World!');
  }
}

@Module({ providers: [HelloService] })
class AppModule {}
const app = await NestFactory.createApplicationContext(AppModule);

const helloService = app.get(HelloService);

helloService.hello(); // this outputs Hello World!

Success! So I believe this confirms you can technically use Nest in Deno :).

You may notice that your IDE is complaining about Module decorator usage. This requires some typescript functionality that is still under the experimental flag. We can enable it by adding some settings to our deno.json.

Add experimentalDecorators and emitDecoratorMetadata to deno.json

{
  ...
  "compilerOptions": {
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "emitDecoratorMetadata": true
  }
}

Attempting to run a Nest Server Application in Deno

Previously we used NestFactory.createApplicationContext to create a Nest app without listening for HTTP requests. Let’s try to create a Nest server application and listen for HTTP requests.

Let’s create a Nest Application Instance (http server)

  1. Update NestFactory.createApplicationContext to NestFactory.create. This will create a Nest server application.
  2. You’ll notice the error No driver (HTTP) has been selected. In order to take advantage of the default driver, please, ensure to install the "@nestjs/platform-express" package ($ npm install @nestjs/platform-express)
  3. Run deno add npm:@nestjs/platform-express to add the package to the import map.
  4. Update main.ts to look like the following:
import { NestFactory } from '@nestjs/core';
import { Module } from '@nestjs/common';
import '@nestjs/platform-express';

class HelloService {
  hello() {
    console.log('Hello World!');
  }
}

@Module({ providers: [HelloService] })
class AppModule {}
const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);

app.listen(3000);

You can now verify that the server is running by visiting http://localhost:3000

Although you see a 404 error, this confirms that the server is running.

Also, update the deno task in deno.json to include the --allow-net flag and avoid the grant access prompt.

{
  "tasks": {
     "dev": "deno run --watch --allow-read --allow-env --allow-net main.ts"
  },
  ...
}

Let’s expose our Hello Service via an HTTP endpoint

  1. create a controller and inject HelloService into it.
  2. register the controller in the AppModule
class HelloController {
  constructor(private helloService: HelloService) {}

  @Get()
  hello() {
    this.helloService.hello();
    return 'Hello World!';
  }
}
@Module({
  providers: [HelloService],
  controllers: [HelloController],
})

The full main.ts file should look like this:

import { NestFactory } from '@nestjs/core';
import { Get, Module, Controller } from '@nestjs/common';
import '@nestjs/platform-express';

class HelloService {
  hello() {
    return 'Hello World!'; // updated to return instead of console.log
  }
}

@Controller()
class HelloController {
  constructor(private helloService: HelloService) {}

  @Get('/')
  hello() {
    return this.helloService.hello();
  }
}

@Module({ providers: [HelloService], controllers: [HelloController] })
class AppModule {}
const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
app.listen(3000);

Now verify that the new endpoint is working by visiting http://localhost:3000. You’ll see the message Hello World! displayed on the page.

Update: 2024-07-09

After writing this, I attempted to publish my hello world script to Deno Cloud through Deploy Ctl. I encountered issues with the deployment, which led me to explore other frameworks like Fresh. I’ve written about my experience with Fresh in my latest blog post, A URL Shortener built for humans with Deno and Fresh.

The bug though was posted on the Deno Deploy Github repo. You can follow the issue here. Since the writing of this post, the issue is now resolved and you can deploy NestJS apps to Deno Cloud. The issue was that Deno Cloud’s runtime did not have emitDecoratorMetadata enabled and this caused the DI to fail.