Base NestJS Backend Starter

A production-ready NestJS base project with industry-standard structure, secure bootstrap, typed configuration, validation, health checks, logging, Swagger docs, linting/formatting, and Docker setup.

Features

• Typed configuration with validation (@nestjs/config, joi)
• Centralized bootstrap: global prefix, API versioning, CORS, Helmet, compression, cookies
• Global validation pipe (whitelist + transform)
• Structured logging with nestjs-pino (pretty in dev)
• Rate limiting via @nestjs/throttler
• Health checks with @nestjs/terminus at /health
• OpenAPI (Swagger) docs (configurable path)
• ESLint + Prettier configured
• Dockerfile and docker-compose for local/prod

Project Structure

src/
  common/
    filters/
    interceptors/
  config/
    configuration.ts
    validation.ts
  modules/
    health/
      health.controller.ts
      health.module.ts
  app.controller.ts
  app.module.ts
  app.service.ts
  main.ts

Getting Started

1. Copy env and install dependencies:

cp .env.example .env
pnpm install

2. Run locally (watch):

pnpm run start:dev

3. Build and run prod:

pnpm run build
pnpm run start:prod

Environment

Edit .env (all values validated):

• APP_NAME, NODE_ENV, HOST, PORT, GLOBAL_PREFIX
• LOG_LEVEL, LOG_PRETTY
• CORS_ENABLED, CORS_ORIGIN
• SWAGGER_ENABLED, SWAGGER_PATH, SWAGGER_TITLE, SWAGGER_DESCRIPTION, SWAGGER_VERSION
• RATE_LIMIT_TTL, RATE_LIMIT_LIMIT

API

• Hello: GET /api/v1
• Health: GET /health
• Docs: GET /docs (if enabled)

Scripts

• build: clean and compile
• start: run compiled app
• start:dev: dev server with watch
• start:prod: production mode
• lint: lint and fix
• test, test:watch, test:cov, test:e2e

Docker

Build and run:

docker build -t base-api .
docker run -p 3000:3000 --env-file .env base-api

Or via compose:

docker-compose up --build

Conventions

• Use v{n} URI versioning; add @Version('2') for new endpoints
• Keep modules self-contained under src/modules/<name>
• Configuration under src/config only; do not read process.env elsewhere
• Global concerns (filters, interceptors) under src/common

License

UNLICENSED (customize as needed)