Compression and security headers in NestJS - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Compression and Security Headers in NestJS

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple NestJS server for a blog website. To improve performance and security, you want to add compression and security headers to your server responses.

🎯 Goal: Set up a NestJS application that uses middleware to compress responses and add security headers using Helmet.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a basic NestJS application with a root module

Add compression middleware to compress HTTP responses

Add Helmet middleware to set security headers

Configure the middleware in the main application bootstrap

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Web servers often use compression to reduce response size and security headers to protect users from common web vulnerabilities.

💼 Career

Understanding how to add middleware like compression and Helmet is essential for backend developers working with Node.js frameworks like NestJS to build secure and efficient web applications.

1

Create a basic NestJS application

Create a NestJS application by importing NestFactory from @nestjs/core and the root module AppModule from ./app.module. Then create an async function bootstrap that creates the app instance using NestFactory.create(AppModule).

NestJS

import { NestFactory } from '@nestjs/core';
import { AppModule } from './app.module';

async function bootstrap() {
  // Your code here
}

bootstrap();

Need a hint?

Use NestFactory.create(AppModule) inside the bootstrap function to create the app.

2

Add compression middleware

Import compression from the compression package. Then, inside the bootstrap function, add the compression middleware to the app by calling app.use(compression()).

NestJS

import compression from 'compression';

async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
  // Your code here
}

bootstrap();

Need a hint?

Use app.use(compression()) to add compression middleware.

3

Add Helmet middleware for security headers

Import helmet from the helmet package. Then, inside the bootstrap function, add the Helmet middleware to the app by calling app.use(helmet()) after adding compression.

NestJS

import helmet from 'helmet';

async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
  app.use(compression());
  // Your code here
}

bootstrap();

Need a hint?

Use app.use(helmet()) to add security headers middleware.

4

Start the NestJS server

Inside the bootstrap function, after adding the middleware, start the server by calling await app.listen(3000) to listen on port 3000.

NestJS

async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
  app.use(compression());
  app.use(helmet());
  // Your code here
}

bootstrap();

Need a hint?

Use await app.listen(3000) to start the server on port 3000.