@nestd/core

nestd

nestd is a simplified framework for building Node.js applications. Most of the nestd source code is directly taken from Nest.js.

What's the point?

nestd is extremely similar to Nest.js. Nest.js is great, but it’s opinionated. It assumes that the core of your application will be an HTTP server. As a result, it provides you with a lot of built-ins and utilities for developing websites or APIs.

But sometimes you don’t necessarily want to communicate over HTTP. Sometimes you don’t necessarily even want to communicate at all. Still, the abstractions that Nest.js provides are extremely useful when building large applications with many component. We wanted a framework with two basic components: services and modules.

nestd takes these key components from Nest.js to create a new, simplified framework. Just like with Nest.js, you can define services that talk to one another and modules that weave these services together. However, nestd has no native concept of HTTP servers. If you want to expose your app via an HTTP API, you can implement the server as a service.

Documentation

We're actively working on putting together some documentation for nestd. Fortunately, because nestd is only slightly adapted from Nest.js, you can pretty much get away with using the Nest.js docs.

Nest.js Differences

Services

Unlike Nest.js, nestd has no concept of Controllers, Providers, and Injectables. nestd only has two components, services and modules.

Services are identified using an @Service(). For example:

// example.service.ts
import { Service } from '@nestd/common'

@Service()
export class ExampleService {
  // Do stuff.
}

Modules

Modules in nestd basically function the same way that they they do in Nest.js. They can import and export other modules or services.

// app.module.ts
import { Module } from '@nestd/common'
import { ExampleService } from './example.service'

@Module({
  services: [
    ExampleService
  ]
})
export class AppModule { }

App Bootstrap

We need an entry point that actually initializes and starts the app. However, unlike Nest.js, the app that gets created is just a shell that holds all of the other services.

// main.ts
import { NestdFactory } from '@nestd/core'
import { AppModule } from './app.module'

async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestdFactory.create(AppModule)
  app.start() // It's running!
}
bootstrap()