Scaffold a new project in seconds with the CLI

Wiring up app.ts, the catch-all route, and tsconfig.json's decorator flags by hand is only a few minutes of work — but it's a few minutes you'll repeat on every new project or feature. The nextjs-nestapi CLI does it for you.

Starting a brand new project

npx nextjs-nestapi new my-app

This runs create-next-app under the hood, then:

• writes src/app.ts with an empty createApplication({ controllers: [] })
• writes src/app/api/[[...route]]/route.ts, the catch-all dispatcher
• patches tsconfig.json with experimentalDecorators/emitDecoratorMetadata
• installs nextjs-nestapi, class-validator, and class-transformer

Add --swagger to also scaffold /api/openapi.json and /api-docs (see the OpenAPI / Swagger docs post).

Wiring an existing project

Already have a Next.js App Router project? init does the same wiring without the create-next-app step:

npx nextjs-nestapi init --swagger

It never overwrites a file that already exists unless you pass --force, and if it can't patch tsconfig.json automatically (say, because compilerOptions isn't where it expects), it tells you exactly what to add by hand instead of guessing.

Adding a feature

npx nextjs-nestapi generate controller student
# or the short alias:
npx nextjs-nestapi g controller student

This scaffolds:

src/features/student/controller.ts
src/features/student/dto.ts

and, if src/app.ts has a recognizable controllers: [...] array, registers StudentController there automatically — import added, array updated. If the shape of app.ts isn't recognized, the command leaves it untouched and prints what to add yourself, rather than risk corrupting a file it can't parse confidently.

Full reference: CLI.