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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Nx Has a Free API — Here's How to Use It for Smart Monorepo Management

#monorepo #nx #webdev #javascript

Nx is a powerful build system with first-class monorepo support. It provides computation caching, affected commands, code generation, and project graph visualization — all for free.

Getting Started 

npx create-nx-workspace@latest my-workspace --preset=ts
cd my-workspace
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Project Configuration 

// project.json
{
  "name": "my-app",
  "targets": {
    "build": {
      "executor": "@nx/webpack:webpack",
      "outputs": ["{options.outputPath}"],
      "options": {
        "outputPath": "dist/apps/my-app",
        "main": "apps/my-app/src/main.ts"
      }
    },
    "test": {
      "executor": "@nx/jest:jest",
      "options": {
        "jestConfig": "apps/my-app/jest.config.ts"
      }
    }
  }
}
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Affected Commands 

# Only build/test what changed
nx affected -t build
nx affected -t test
nx affected -t lint

# See what's affected
nx affected --graph
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Code Generation 

# Generate a new library
nx g @nx/js:lib shared-utils

# Generate a React component
nx g @nx/react:component Button --project=ui-lib

# Generate a new app
nx g @nx/next:app my-next-app
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Task Caching and Distribution 

// nx.json
{
  "tasksRunnerOptions": {
    "default": {
      "runner": "nx/tasks-runners/default",
      "options": {
        "cacheableOperations": ["build", "lint", "test", "e2e"]
      }
    }
  }
}
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Project Graph 

# Interactive project dependency graph
nx graph

# Focus on specific project
nx graph --focus=my-app
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Nx Plugins Ecosystem

Nx has plugins for React, Angular, Next.js, Nest, Express, Storybook, Cypress, Jest, ESLint, and more. Each plugin provides generators and executors tailored to the framework.

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