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Learning

First steps

Setting up a new project is quite simple with the Nest CLI. With npm installed, you can create a new Nest project with the following commands in your OS terminal:

Terminal window
 npm i -g @nestjs/cli
 nest new project-name

The project-name directory will be created, node modules and a few other boilerplate files will be installed, and a src/ directory will be created and populated with several core files.

  • Directoryproject-name
    • Directorynode_modules/
      • …
    • Directorysrc
      • app.controller.spec.ts
      • app.controller.ts
      • app.module.ts
      • app.service.ts
      • main.ts
    • Directorytest
      • app.e2e-spec.ts
      • jest-e2e.json
    • .eslintrc.js
    • .gitignore
    • .prettierrc
    • nest-cli.json
    • package-lock.json
    • package.json
    • README.md
    • tsconfig.build.json
    • tsconfig.json

The main.ts includes an async function, which will bootstrap our application:

main.ts
import { NestFactory } from '@nestjs/core';
import { AppModule } from './app.module';


async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
  await app.listen(process.env.PORT ?? 3000);
}
bootstrap();

Running the application

Terminal window
nest start --watch

This command starts the app with the HTTP server listening on the port defined in the src/main.ts file. Once the application is running, open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000/. You should see the Hello World! message.