nx/docs/web/fundamentals/use-modern-tools.md

Using Modern Tools

Using Nx, you can add Cypress, Jest, Prettier, and Nest into your dev workflow.

Of course, it's not the case that Cypress is always better than Protractor or Nest is always better than say Express. There are tradeoffs. But in many situations, for many projects, these innovative tools offer a lot of advantages.

Nest

Nest is a Node.js framework designed for building scalable server-side applications.

To create a new Nest application, run:

yarn add --dev @nrwl/nest # Add Nest Capabilities to a workspace
yarn g @nrwl/nest:application api # Create a Nest App

This will create the following:

<workspace name>/
├── apps/
│   └── api/
│       ├── jest.conf.js
│       ├── proxy.conf.json
│       ├── src/
│       │   ├── app/
│       │   │   ├── app.controller.ts
│       │   │   ├── app.controller.spec.ts
│       │   │   ├── app.module.ts
│       │   │   ├── app.service.ts
│       │   │   └── app.service.spec.ts
│       │   ├── assets/
│       │   ├── environments/
│       │   └── main.ts
│       ├── tsconfig.app.json
│       ├── tsconfig.json
│       ├── tsconfig.spec.json
│       └── tslint.json
├── libs/
├── workspace.json
├── nx.json
├── package.json
├── tools/
├── tsconfig.json
└── tslint.json

You can run:

• ng serve api to serve the application
• ng build api to build the application
• ng test api to test the application

Adding a Nest app will also add Nest schematics to the workspace, which you can run as follows:

ng generate @nestjs/schematics:controller mycontroller --sourceRoot=apps/nestapp/src --path=app

Read more about Nest at nestjs.com.

Using Express

To create an express application, run:

yarn add --dev @nrwl/express # Add Express Capabilities to a workspace
ng g @nrwl/express:application api # Create an Express Application

Using Other Frameworks

To create an empty node application, run:

yarn add --dev @nrwl/node # Add Node Capabilities to a workspace
ng g @nrwl/node:application api # Create a Node Application

Cypress

Cypress is an e2e test runner built for modern web. It has a lot of great features:

• Time travel
• Real time reloads
• Automatic waiting
• Spies, stubs, and clocks
• Network traffic control
• Screenshots and videos

By default, when creating a new web application, Nx will use Cypress to create the e2e tests project.

So running ng g @nrwl/web:application frontend will create:

<workspace name>/
├── apps/
│   ├── myapp/
│   │   ├── src/
│   │   │   ├── app/
│   │   │   ├── assets/
│   │   │   ├── environments/
│   │   │   ├── favicon.ico
│   │   │   ├── index.html
│   │   │   ├── main.ts
│   │   │   ├── polyfills.ts
│   │   │   └── styles.css
│   │   ├── browserslist
│   │   ├── jest.config.js
│   │   ├── tsconfig.app.json
│   │   ├── tsconfig.json
│   │   ├── tsconfig.spec.json
│   │   └── tslint.json
│   └── myapp-e2e/
│       ├── src/
│       │   ├── fixtures/
│       │   │   └── example.json
│       │   ├── integration/
│       │   │   └── app.spec.ts
│       │   ├── plugins/
│       │   │   └── index.ts
│       │   └── support/
│       │       ├── app.po.ts
│       │       ├── commands.ts
│       │       └── index.ts
│       ├── cypress.json
│       ├── tsconfig.e2e.json
│       ├── tsconfig.json
│       └── tslint.json
├── libs/
├── tools/
├── README.md
├── workspace.json
├── nx.json
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
└── tslint.json

You can run:

• ng e2e frontend-e2e to run e2e tests
• ng e2e frontend-e2e --watch to run e2e tests in the watch mode
• ng e2e frontend-e2e --headless to run e2e tests in the headless mode (used in CI)

Read more about Cypress at cypress.io.

Jest

Jest is a fast 0-setup testing framework from Facebook.

By default, Nx uses Jest for both Web and Node.js applications. So if you run ng g application frontend, you will get:

<workspace name>/
├── apps/
│   ├── frontend/
│   │   ├── src/
│   │   │   ├── app/
│   │   │   ├── assets/
│   │   │   ├── environments/
│   │   │   ├── favicon.ico
│   │   │   ├── index.html
│   │   │   ├── main.tsx
│   │   │   ├── polyfills.ts
│   │   │   └── styles.css
│   │   ├── browserslist
│   │   ├── jest.config.js
│   │   ├── tsconfig.app.json
│   │   ├── tsconfig.json
│   │   ├── tsconfig.spec.json
│   │   └── tslint.json
│   └── frontend-e2e/
├── libs/
├── tools/
├── README.md
├── workspace.json
├── nx.json
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
└── tslint.json

Read more about Jest at jestjs.io.

Prettier

Prettier is an opinionated code formatter. An Nx workspace comes with Prettier preconfigured.

<workspace name>/
├── apps/
├── libs/
├── tools/
├── workspace.json
├── nx.json
├── README.md
├── package.json
├── .prettierrc # prettier config
├── .prettierignore # config to ignore files from prettier
├── tsconfig.json
└── tslint.json

You can run:

• yarn format:write to format the files
• yarn format:check to check the formatted files

Read more about Prettier.