Does NestJS Work With Strapi?
NestJS and Strapi work excellently together as a decoupled backend architecture, with NestJS consuming Strapi's REST or GraphQL APIs.
Quick Facts
How NestJS Works With Strapi
NestJS and Strapi are complementary technologies that operate at different layers of your backend. Strapi serves as your headless CMS and content API, while NestJS acts as your business logic and application server. NestJS consumes Strapi's REST or GraphQL endpoints using its built-in HttpModule, making requests to fetch, create, or manipulate content. This separation of concerns allows teams to manage content independently in Strapi while building custom APIs, microservices, or real-time features in NestJS. The developer experience is smooth—you define NestJS services to wrap Strapi API calls, handle caching, transform data, and add authentication layers. Common architectures include using NestJS as a BFF (Backend-for-Frontend) that aggregates Strapi content with other data sources, or running Strapi in a separate process for content management while NestJS handles application-specific logic. Performance considerations include implementing request caching with Redis, rate limiting for Strapi calls, and using GraphQL queries to reduce over-fetching from Strapi's API.
Best Use Cases
Quick Setup
npm install @nestjs/common @nestjs/core axiosimport { Injectable } from '@nestjs/common';
import axios from 'axios';
@Injectable()
export class StrapiService {
private readonly baseUrl = 'http://localhost:1337';
private readonly headers = {
Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.STRAPI_API_TOKEN}`,
};
async getArticles() {
const response = await axios.get(
`${this.baseUrl}/api/articles`,
{ headers: this.headers }
);
return response.data.data;
}
async createArticle(article: { title: string; content: string }) {
const response = await axios.post(
`${this.baseUrl}/api/articles`,
{ data: article },
{ headers: this.headers }
);
return response.data.data;
}
}
@Controller('articles')
export class ArticlesController {
constructor(private strapiService: StrapiService) {}
@Get()
async list() {
return this.strapiService.getArticles();
}
}Known Issues & Gotchas
Strapi authentication tokens expire and require refresh logic
Fix: Implement token refresh interceptors in NestJS HttpModule to automatically handle Strapi API key rotation
Strapi API rate limiting can throttle high-traffic NestJS services
Fix: Implement caching layers (Redis) in NestJS and batch requests to Strapi endpoints
Schema changes in Strapi aren't automatically synced to NestJS DTOs
Fix: Use code generation tools or manually maintain TypeScript interfaces matching Strapi content types
Running both services locally can consume significant resources
Fix: Use Docker Compose to manage both containers with memory limits and healthchecks
Alternatives
- •Contentful + NestJS: Enterprise-grade headless CMS with better scalability but higher cost
- •Sanity + NestJS: Real-time collaborative CMS with more structured content modeling
- •Directus + NestJS: Self-hosted alternative to Strapi with stronger database abstraction layer
Resources
Related Compatibility Guides
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