// the find
lujakob/nestjs-realworld-example-app
Exemplary real world backend API built with NestJS + TypeORM / Prisma
A NestJS implementation of the RealWorld spec — a medium.com clone used as a reference app for comparing full-stack frameworks. It ships two branches: one with TypeORM, one with Prisma, both against MySQL. Useful if you're learning NestJS architecture patterns and want something more concrete than a todo app.
The module structure is clean NestJS — controllers, services, entities, and DTOs are all where you'd expect them, making it easy to trace how a request moves through the system. Having both TypeORM and Prisma implementations in separate branches is genuinely useful for comparison rather than committing to one ORM. JWT auth middleware is simple and readable, not wrapped in abstraction. Swagger is wired in out of the box.
The compiled dist/ directory is checked into the repo, which is a basic project hygiene miss and makes the diff history noisy. `synchronize: true` is on by default in the TypeORM config — that will silently alter tables in production if someone doesn't read the docs. Tests are nearly absent; there's one spec file for the tag controller and nothing else, so 'exemplary' is a stretch on that front. The repo hasn't been touched since March 2024 and still targets an older NestJS version, so some patterns are already dated relative to what NestJS v10+ encourages.