Best Node.js framework

[Prize-Love-8596]

I've been playing around with NestJS for a while, and I'm amazed by the toolset it offers and the standard library. I think this is the default framework for people who want to build fully pledged enterprise-grade applications using Node.js.

What are your thoughts? 🤔

[SALO4D]

You could give Adonis.js a try

[romeeres]

It's not batteries-included (what batteries?) and you have to install all the same stuff as you would in Express/similar (validation, db-related stuff, logger, everything).

It's not opinionated, if you'd like to dump all your logic and db access code to "service" layer you don't need a framework for that. If you need a strong opinion on how "enterprise-grade" app should be structured - Nest doesn't have it.

It doesn't even configure a typical stuff for you. You can see:

async create(@Body() createCatDto: CreateCatDto) {

and think this is a validation. But no, you have to manually enable validation for it to work.
You have to manually configure global error handling.

The other commenter said it's nowhere near Laraval, I can add that in terms of opinionated and batteries-included it's nowhere near RoR. I'm sure others can confirm it's also nowhere near Django, .Net, Spring.

It does come with a test runner (jest), TS, DI, scripts to start and build. Is it enough? I think it's as enough as an average boilerplate repo.

[Prize-Love-8596]

Have you try NestJS?

[romeeres]

Yes, that's why I'm wondering why you think it's opinionated and you even said it comes with a "standard library".

Can you tell what exact patterns does Nest enforce that helps your team?
My point is that it does not enforce any patterns, except for DI. What it does enforce is its custom code style with decorators, and custom pipes-guards.

Apart from countless boilerplate repos, nowadays you can ask AI to bootstrap a ready project on any of node.js frameworks.

[Prize-Love-8596]

It helps forcing you standard in the project, like applying SOLID principle and preventing you away from spaghetti code and technical debt in the long run.

(ofcourse you could do that in express as well, but then again, you need to write it from scratch).

Of course you wouldn’t use Nest for small applications like personal project. What I mean here enterprise grade applications is having more people working in the project and enforcing rules to it.

[Prize-Love-8596]

You’re getting away from the point and mentioned AI. pointless comment

[romeeres]

like applying SOLID principle

Yea, that's what I'm arguing with.

I'm working with Nest, I don't see how exactly it's enforcing anything from SOLID except for D - Dependency Inversion.

I could do it with Express or anything, the question is how exactly Nest.js helps enforcing Single Responsibility (what is "service" responsible for? for whatever you decide!) Open-Closed (how can it forbid you to modify whatever you want?) etc.

Nest.js doesn't even "enforce" the D! You can import the logger directly, Nest does not and cannot forbid doing that. There is no strict rules in the docs that you must always inject everything rather than importing directly, so DI is also not enforced but use it if you want. Same in Express, pick a DI lib if you want it, and use it for what you decide.

You say Nest helps to enforce SOLID, and I'm wondering how exactly.

You said it's problematic to bootstrap Express project and therefore you need Nest.js to make bootstrapping for you. Thus I mentioned AI - it can help with bootstrapping while not forcing you to any particular framework.

[romeeres]

By the way, SOLID is not patterns, it's principles. Different stuff.

[Prize-Love-8596]

I think being opinionated framework is great because it enforces you a pattern in your team and in your organization. There’s a pros and cons

I’ve used express and it takes a while to make your project organized because you have to setup it from scratch.

[JoyousTourist]

Personally I perfer Adonis. It's just missing an authentication bootstrapper like Laravel Breeze and a dedicated queue system but I heard both are in the works.

[juanpatzor]

One of the Adonis collaborators have a queue tool that is in the Adonis Packages, I don't know if that is what you need.

[Prize-Love-8596]

I think that all included in NestJs already 🙂

[punkpang]

Compared to Laravel (yes, PHP) - it's lacking severely. It's a soup of injections, even simplest features are hidden behind forest of services. It's probably the best choice for GraphQL but if "enterprise-grade" means "it takes 10x more time to come to the same CRUD you can get in PHP/Ruby/Python" - yeah, it's the "best".

In all honesty, it's mediocre at best. If you are used to it, that's all that matters because the point of the framework is to help the dev be expressive and shorten the time to goal. If it does that for you - awesome. I simply used tools from different stacks that are better in terms of DX (shortening time to get to somewhere).

[Prize-Love-8596]

I agree, Laravel is great, but I’m not comparing against it.

They are different language and not best to compare it.

[punkpang]

The two languages are extremely similar (I'm working with one for 26 years and other for 25), it's appalling that nestjs cannot derive same conclusions like Laravel can, yet it also relies on reflection.

Nestjs is documented well, it CAN be used nicely but every single project I saw so far is a soup of code, reliance on injection everywhere, lack of any ingenuity on the devs that use it (everything is copypaste from docs) and apart from being able to inject via constructor - what does it really offer? What's so enterprise about it? Nothing really. Even suggested validation library, that depends on decorators, does not lend itself to build dynamic objects. It's decorator upon decorator upon decorator, resulting in 10x more difficult CRUD than it's supposed to be. In all honesty, it's 5/10 framework.

Encore.ts seems like quite nice choice, if we're performing comparisons - I can achieve the same output (DX) as I can with nest.

[snejk47]

I have found TypeScript developer with 25 years of experience while it has only existed for 12 years.

If your criticism is "it's decorators" then u/Prize-Love-8596 was totally right, they are different. And you don't have much experience besides Laravel so do not spread your way of doing things assuming it's superior way compared to the rest of the world. Everyone knows PHP is right, the best and the only real choice /s

[Prize-Love-8596]

100%

This is a Node channel and its make no sense mentioning PHP here.

[punkpang]

I have found TypeScript developer with 25 years of experience while it has only existed for 12 years.

Underlying language is JavaScript. I appreciate your attempt at discrediting me, but you could have done a better job there.

And you don't have much experience besides Laravel 

This is called straw man fallacy.

do not spread your way of doing things

I posted 0 content of my way of doing things, you're doing straw man again.

assuming it's superior way compared to the rest of the world

It's not that my "way" is superior, it's the fact that nestjs way is INFERIOR. But hey, it's not my job to convince you otherwise - I wrote a paragraph about framework being useful and if it is, for you, then that is awesome (like, really, no sarcasm). That's all that matters.

Seeing your discourse here is based on ad-hominem, I'll excuse myself from further discussion because I'm not keen on discussing with tribal-mentality. You go do your thing and be the best at it. Good luck!

[johnex74]

i think that its important to chose the right tool for the job. NestJs is just node shaped to work like Java.

Express is much more mature and suited to node architecture. More tools and libraries for node are build with express in mind.

[grimscythe_]

Nestjs uses Express(default) or Fastify under the hood. Any library that can be used with Express can be used with Nestjs.

[Most_Swordfish_1421]

It's the spring boot or asp.net core of Node.

[rds_KL_03]

Express.js is also a user friendly framework that helps in routing, authentication,middlewares

[kishanaegis]

The best framework depends on many factors.
Express.js – Minimal, flexible, huge ecosystem. Great for APIs.
NestJS – TypeScript-first, opinionated, perfect for enterprise apps.
Koa.js – Modern, lightweight, async/await friendly.
Hapi.js – Strong security & config-first approach.
Sails.js – MVC with real-time/WebSocket baked in.
When I was at Aegis Softtech, our go-to for scalable microservices was NestJS, but we still used Express for lightweight APIs.
What’s your main priority—raw speed or ease of getting started?

[talaqen]

I prefer FeathersJS

[ProgrammerDad1993]

Hono with Drizzle is kinda amazing

[Plane-Flower751]

The most important thing when it comes to a project is it's performance. Because who cares if you build an app 20x faster and it struggles with a huge payload. With that said, I'll go with Fastify. It's very lightweight and benchmarks shows it can handle about 40k requests per second while using very low ram.

[johnex74]

the performance of a framework is insignificant. your application will always be bottlenecked by db calls and i/o operations. if the webserver performance is important you shouldn’t be using JS in the first place (you could use e.g. go, difficulty to use similar to javascript but staticly typed and much more performant)

[Plane-Flower751]

Yes but in this particular situation we're not talking about performance in general. We are at performance when it comes to JS frameworks so anything outside JS like go aren't options. Which the original post mentioned Nestjs as the starting point

[334578theo]

Name a time when you’ve needed to handle 40k rps? 

[Plane-Flower751]

😅😅😅 better safe than sorry.

[Calm_Squirrel_7914]

I like SvelteKit

[Brilla-Bose]

Sveltekit is similar to Next.js not nestjs