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NestJS Platforms: Express vs. Fastify

NestJS Platforms: Express vs. Fastify

Learn and practice using Fastify in NestJS and understand the differences from Express.

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NestJS platforms

NestJS uses Express as the underlying platform by default but can also work with other NodeJS HTTP frameworks. This is because NestJS implements a framework adapter that abstracts away the platform-specific details in middleware and request handling.

The out-of-the-box alternative framework is Fastify. Fastify is known for its exceptional speed and low overhead, making it a great choice for high-performance applications. On the other hand, Express has a robust ecosystem and is widely adopted, making it suitable for a wide range of use cases.

Use Fastify in NestJS

To use Fastify, we need to install the following package:

npm i --save @nestjs/platform-fastify
Install the Fastify package using Node Package Manager (npm)

Then, we can modify the main.ts file to use the Fastify adapter.

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async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestFactory.create<NestFastifyApplication>(
    AppModule,
    new FastifyAdapter()
  );
  await app.listen(3000);
}

In the bootstrap() function above, we use NestFactory.create to create a NestJS application instance. It takes the following two arguments:

  • AppModule: This is the root module of our NestJS ...