Node Plugin

The Node Plugin contains generators and executors to manage Node applications within an Nx workspace. It provides:

Setting Up Node

To add the Node plugin to an existing workspace, run one of the following:

# For npm users
npm install -D @nrwl/node

# For yarn users
yarn add -D @nrwl/node

Creating Applications

You can add a new application with the following:

nx g @nrwl/node:application my-new-app

You can run your application with nx serve my-new-app, which starts it in watch mode.

Creating Libraries

Node libraries are a good way to separate features within your organization. To create a Node library run the following command:

nx g @nrwl/js:node my-new-lib

# If you want the library to be buildable or publishable to npm
nx g @nrwl/node:lib my-new-lib --buildable
nx g @nrwl/node:lib my-new-lib \
--publishable \
--importPath=@myorg/my-new-lib

Using Node

Testing Projects

You can run unit tests with:

nx test my-new-app
nx test my-new-lib

Replace my-new-app with the name or your project. This command works for both applications and libraries.

Building Projects

Node applications can be build with:

nx build my-new-app

And if you generated a library with --buildable, then you can build a library as well:

nx build my-new-lib

The output is in the dist folder. You can customize the output folder by setting outputPath in the project's project.json file.

Application Proxies

Generating Node applications has an option to configure other projects in the workspace to proxy API requests. This can be done by passing the --frontendProject with the project name you wish to enable proxy support for.

nx g @nrwl/node:application my-new-app \
--frontendProject my-react-app

Debugging

Debugging is set to use a random port that is available on the system. The port can be changed by setting the port option in the serve architect in the workspace.json. Or by running the serve command with --port <number>.

For additional information on how to debug Node applications, see the Node.js debugging getting started guide.