NestJS app with Clerk 5

The repo demonstrates the following bug:

error TypeError: Failed to parse URL from /protected
    at new Request (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:6110:19)
    at new ClerkRequest (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@clerk/backend/src/tokens/clerkRequest.ts:24:5)
    ... 6 lines matching cause stack trace ...
    at canActivateFn (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@nestjs/core/router/router-execution-context.js:135:59)
    at /home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@nestjs/core/router/router-execution-context.js:42:37 {
  [cause]: TypeError: Invalid URL
      at new URL (node:internal/url:796:36)
      at new Request (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:6108:25)
      at new ClerkRequest (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@clerk/backend/src/tokens/clerkRequest.ts:24:5)
      at createClerkRequest (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@clerk/backend/src/tokens/clerkRequest.ts:72:54)
      at authenticateRequest (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@clerk/backend/src/tokens/request.ts:66:57)
      at Object.authenticateRequest2 [as authenticateRequest] (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@clerk/backend/src/tokens/factory.ts:51:12)
      at AuthService.authenticateRequest (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/src/auth/auth.service.ts:26:32)
      at AuthGuard.canActivate (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/src/auth/auth.guard.ts:32:52)
      at GuardsConsumer.tryActivate (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@nestjs/core/guards/guards-consumer.js:15:34)
      at canActivateFn (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@nestjs/core/router/router-execution-context.js:135:59) {
    code: 'ERR_INVALID_URL',
    input: '/protected'
  }
}

Dependencies

• pnpm 9
• NestJS 10
• Clerk 5

Requirements

Replace INSERT_CLERK_SECRET in src/auth/auth.service.ts at line 13.

How to run

Install dependencies, pnpm or npm, your choice, pnpm is demonstrated here.

pnpm install

Run app

pnpm start

In another terminal

curl 'http://localhost:3000/public'
// should reply: Hello from public route

and this

curl 'http://localhost:3000/protected'
// should reply: {"message":"Forbidden resource","error":"Forbidden","statusCode":403}

The app will throw the TypeError as shown in the intro

error TypeError: Failed to parse URL from /protected
    at new Request (node:internal/deps/undici/undici:6110:19)
    at new ClerkRequest (/home/clerk5-nestjs-bug/node_modules/@clerk/backend/src/tokens/clerkRequest.ts:24:5)
    ... [truncated]

Other problems

clerkClient.authenticateRequest() takes a global Request object but won't accept Request from express. NestJS is built on top of express by default, so the request objects are always from express. This requires some rather ugly typecasting:

// import type Request from express
import { Request } from 'express';

// needs type casting
this.clerkClient.authenticateRequest(request as unknown as globalThis.Request);

This problem can be proved by activating the import on line 1 in src/auth/auth.service.ts.