NestJS Template

Production-ready NestJS API starter with Prisma, Pino logging, Swagger, Throttler, and global exception handling.

Stack

• NestJS 11 — framework
• Prisma 6 — ORM + migrations
• nestjs-pino — structured JSON logging (pino-pretty in dev)
• @nestjs/swagger — OpenAPI docs at /api/docs
• @nestjs/throttler — rate limiting via global guard
• class-validator + class-transformer — DTO validation
• Vitest — unit testing
• Husky — Git hooks
• lint-staged — run Prettier only on staged files
• commitlint — enforce conventional commit format
• Prettier — code formatting

Getting started

# 1. Install dependencies
pnpm install

# 2. Initialize Husky hooks (run once after cloning)
pnpm prepare

# 3. Configure environment
cp .env.example .env
# Edit DATABASE_URL and other vars

# 4. Generate Prisma client
pnpm prisma generate

# 5. Run migrations
pnpm prisma migrate dev --name init

# 6. Start dev server
pnpm dev

Project structure

src/
├── main.ts                          # Bootstrap (CORS, Swagger, ValidationPipe)
├── app.module.ts                    # Root module (LoggerModule, PrismaModule, ThrottlerModule)
├── prisma/
│   ├── prisma.module.ts             # Global Prisma module
│   └── prisma.service.ts            # PrismaClient wrapper
└── common/
    └── filters/
        └── http-exception.filter.ts # Global exception filter

Git hooks

Hook	What it does
pre-commit	Runs lint-staged (Prettier on staged files)
commit-msg	Validates commit message format (commitlint)

Commit message format

Follows Conventional Commits:

<type>(<scope>): <description>

Allowed types: feat, fix, docs, refactor, test, chore, perf, style, ci, build, revert

Prisma commands

pnpm prisma migrate dev --name <migration-name>   # Create & apply migration
pnpm prisma migrate deploy                         # Apply migrations in production
pnpm prisma studio                                 # Open Prisma Studio GUI
pnpm prisma generate                               # Regenerate client after schema changes

Adding a new module

nest g module <name>
nest g service <name>
nest g controller <name>

Register the module in app.module.ts imports.

Environment variables

Variable	Description	Default
NODE_ENV	development or production	development
PORT	HTTP port	3001
DATABASE_URL	PostgreSQL connection string	—
ALLOWED_ORIGINS	Comma-separated CORS origins	http://localhost:3000

Scripts

Command	Description
pnpm dev	Dev server with hot-reload
pnpm build	Compile to dist/
pnpm start	Run compiled build
pnpm lint	ESLint check
pnpm test	Run unit tests
pnpm test:coverage	Run tests with coverage
pnpm prepare	Install Husky hooks