Skip to content

[Draft] NestJS server codegen #21494

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Draft
wants to merge 14 commits into
base: master
Choose a base branch
from

Conversation

aryobenholzner
Copy link

@aryobenholzner aryobenholzner commented Jun 29, 2025

proposed solution for #11785

This is a prototype of a server code generator for NestJS. The code probably needs improvement, I'm relatively new in this codebase and tried to adhere to existing generators. As of now, I only want to gather feedback on the solution the generated output provides, and whether it's worth continuing this approach.

Description a per the added README

OpenApi Generator typescript-nestjs-server

Usage: The generated output is intended to be its own module, that can be imported into your NestJS App Module. You do not need to change generated files, just import the module and implement the API

Example usage (with the openapi sample petstore.yaml):

  1. Invoke openapi-generator
    openapi-generator-cli.jar generate -i petstore.yaml -g typescript-nestjs-server -o api-module/
    
  2. implement the contracts from api-module/api
    handlers/PetService.ts:
    import { Pet, ApiResponse } from "models";
    import { Observable } from "rxjs";
    import { PetApi } from "../api";
    import { Inject, Injectable } from "@nestjs/common";
    
    @Injectable()
    export class PetService implements PetApi {
      addPet(pet: Pet, request: Request): Pet | Promise<Pet> | Observable<Pet> {
        throw new Error("Method not implemented.");
      }
    
      deletePet(petId: number, apiKey: string, request: Request): void | Promise<void> | Observable<void> {
        throw new Error("Method not implemented.");
      }
    
    ...
  3. Import the generated ApiModule with ApiModule.forRoot and provide a instance of ApiImplementations with a reference to your implementation
    app.module.ts
    import { Module } from "@nestjs/common";
    import { ApiModule, ApiImplementations } from "api-module";
    import { PetService } from "./handlers/PetService";
    import { UserService } from "./handlers/UserService";
    import { StoreService } from "./handlers/StoreService";
    
    const apiImplementations: ApiImplementations = {
      petApi: PetService,
      userApi: UserService,
      storeApi: StoreService,
    }
    
    @Module({
      imports: [
        ApiModule.forRoot(apiImplementations),
      ],
      controllers: [],
      providers: [],
    })
    export class AppModule {}

You now can regenerate the API module as often as you want without overriding your implementation.


@TiFu @taxpon @sebastianhaas @kenisteward @Vrolijkx @macjohnny @topce @akehir @petejohansonxo (2019/11) @amakhrov @davidgamero @mkusaka @joscha

Copy link
Member

@macjohnny macjohnny left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

thanks for adding this new generator!

import static org.openapitools.codegen.utils.CamelizeOption.LOWERCASE_FIRST_LETTER;
import static org.openapitools.codegen.utils.StringUtils.*;

public class TypeScriptNestjsServerCodegen extends AbstractTypeScriptClientCodegen {
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
{
"compilerOptions": {
"module": "commonjs",
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

is this expected?

Copy link
Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

It was created like this from the scaffolding from the Nest CLI. I'm not sure if it would work correctly for all projects if we change it to esNext. I don't think there would be any downsides if we keep it as commonjs . What do you think?

"test:e2e": "jest --config ./test/jest-e2e.json"
},
"dependencies": {
"@nestjs/common": "^11.0.1",
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

please use the nest version variable like in

Copy link
Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I cleaned up package.mustache and parameterized all versions

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
import { Injectable } from '@nestjs/common';
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

this.cliOptions.add(new CliOption(MODEL_FILE_SUFFIX, "The suffix of the file of the generated model (model<suffix>.ts)."));
this.cliOptions.add(new CliOption(FILE_NAMING, "Naming convention for the output files: 'camelCase', 'kebab-case'.").defaultValue(this.fileNaming));
this.cliOptions.add(new CliOption(STRING_ENUMS, STRING_ENUMS_DESC).defaultValue(String.valueOf(this.stringEnums)));
this.cliOptions.add(new CliOption(USE_SINGLE_REQUEST_PARAMETER, "Setting this property to true will generate functions with a single argument containing all API endpoint parameters instead of one argument per parameter.").defaultValue(Boolean.FALSE.toString()));
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

this isnt used right now, right?
i would suggest to set it to true by default, it will avoid clashes in the generated code with variables.

Copy link
Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

No, it's not used indeed. Shall it really be kept instead of removed?

Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

inwould suggest to implement it ;)

export type ApiImplementations = {
{{#apis}}
{{#operations}}
{{#lambda.camelcase}}{{classname}}{{/lambda.camelcase}}: Type<{{classname}}>
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

how is the implementer supposed to use this? can you clarify that in the PR description?

Copy link
Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I updated the description as well as the committed README

@wing328
Copy link
Member

wing328 commented Jun 30, 2025

thanks for the PR

suggestions:

@aryobenholzner
Copy link
Author

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! 
I’m glad to see the comments coming in.

Apologies for any messiness at this stage. I wanted to get early feedback before spending time polishing things. There are probably a few things left from the initial NestJS scaffolding or generator code that doesn't serve any purpose here.

From what I gather, the overall approach seems acceptable. I’ll continue building on this and refining it based on your input. Let me know if anything fundamental needs to change!

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Projects
None yet
Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

3 participants