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nextjs-nestapi

Write Next.js App Router API routes in NestJS style — decorator-based controllers, DTO validation, middleware, and auto-generated OpenAPI/Swagger docs, all dispatched through a single catch-all route.ts. Ships with a CLI to scaffold new projects and features.

Why nextjs-nestapi​

Next.js App Router API routes are fast but low-level: every endpoint is its own file, request parsing and validation are manual, and there's no shared structure for larger APIs. NestJS solves this with controllers, decorators, and DTOs — but pulling in a full Nest runtime (modules, a DI container, its own HTTP adapter) inside a Next.js app is a lot of machinery for what is usually just "organize my API routes."

nextjs-nestapi is the middle ground: NestJS-style ergonomics, implemented as a thin layer over Next.js's own NextRequest/NextResponse, with no DI container and no second framework running alongside Next.js. One catch-all route dispatches to plain @Controller classes.

What you get​

  • Decorator-based routing (@Controller, @Get, @Post, …)
  • Request body validation via @Body(DtoClass) and class-validator
  • Authentication guards (@AuthGuard/@CurrentUser) reading a context.user your middleware sets, no DI container
  • Global and per-route middleware
  • Auto-generated OpenAPI documents and a self-hosted Swagger UI
  • A CLI (nextjs-nestapi new / init / generate controller) to scaffold projects and features

Continue to Installation to add it to a project, or jump straight to the Quick start for a working example.