Build fast and customizable admin panel with NestJS.

All the steps described are in this repo.

Intro

NestJS is a framework for building efficient, scalable Node.js server-side applications. With nestjsx/crud we can add CRUD functions quickly and effortlessly on this framework.

In this article, we will prepare a simple job-posting application. We will also use the refine framework for the admin panel. The project will consist of two parts, api and admin.

 NestJS Rest Api

To start playing with NestJS you should have node (>= 10.13.0, except for v13) and npm installed.

Create Project Folder

mkdir job-posting-app
cd job-posting-app

Setting up a new project is quite simple with the Nest CLI. With npm installed, you can create a new Nest project with the following commands in your OS terminal:

npm i -g @nestjs/cli
nest new api

TypeORM is definitely the most mature ORM available in the node.js world. Since it's written in TypeScript, it works pretty well with the Nest framework. I chose mysql as database. TypeORM supports many databases (MySQL, MariaDB, Postgres etc.)

To start with this library we have to install all required dependencies:

npm install --save @nestjs/typeorm @nestjs/config typeorm mysql2

• Create an .env.example file. Here we will save the database information.
• Create and configured a docker-compose file for MySQL.
• Create a ormconfig.ts file for migrations.
• Add the following scripts to the package.json file for migrations.

"typeorm": "ts-node -r tsconfig-paths/register ./node_modules/typeorm/cli.js",
"db:migration:generate": "npm run typeorm -- migration:generate",
"db:migration:run": "npm run typeorm -- migration:run",
"db:migration:revert": "npm run typeorm -- migration:revert",
"db:refresh": "npm run typeorm schema:drop && npm run db:migration:run"

• Import the TypeOrmModule into the app.module.ts

Install nestjsx-crud
I used nestjsx-crud library because it makes crud functions easier.

npm i @nestjsx/crud @nestjsx/crud-typeorm class-transformer class-validator

Since the steps to create Entities Contorllers, and services are very long, I do not explain step by step. You can check the repo for details.

It created these end-points automatically with nestjsx/crud.

Now let's refine the admin panel. With Superplate, we can quickly create a refine project.

npx superplate-cli admin

Answer as below:

✔ Select your project type › refine
✔ What will be the name of your app · admin
✔ Do you want to customize theme?: · less
✔ Data Provider: · nestjsx-crud-data-provider
✔ Auth Provider: · none
✔ Do you want to add an example page? · example-resource
✔ Do you want to customize layout? · custom-layout
✔ i18n - Internationalization: · no

cd admin
npm run dev

Refine's sample application will welcome you.

Change api url in admin/src/App.tsx

const API_URL = "http://localhost:3000";

Let's add the listing page in refine for the companies crud end-point.

/admin/src/pages/companies/list.tsx

import {
  List,
  Table,
  TextField,
  useTable,
  IResourceComponentsProps,
  getDefaultSortOrder,
  Space,
  EditButton,
  DeleteButton,
  TagField,
  ShowButton,
} from "@pankod/refine";
import { ICompany } from "interfaces";

export const CompanyList: React.FC<IResourceComponentsProps> = () => {
  const { tableProps, sorter } = useTable<ICompany>({
    initialSorter: [
      {
        field: "id",
        order: "desc",
      },
    ],
  });

  return (
    <List>
      <Table {...tableProps} rowKey="id">
        <Table.Column
          dataIndex="id"
          key="id"
          title="ID"
          render={(value) => <TextField value={value} />}
          defaultSortOrder={getDefaultSortOrder("id", sorter)}
          sorter
        />
        <Table.Column
          dataIndex="name"
          key="name"
          title="Name"
          render={(value) => <TextField value={value} />}
          defaultSortOrder={getDefaultSortOrder("name", sorter)}
          sorter
        />
        <Table.Column
          dataIndex="location"
          key="location"
          title="Location"
          render={(value) => <TextField value={value} />}
          defaultSortOrder={getDefaultSortOrder("location", sorter)}
          sorter
        />
        <Table.Column
          dataIndex="isActive"
          key="isActive"
          title="Is Active"
          render={(value) => <TagField value={value} />}
          defaultSortOrder={getDefaultSortOrder("status", sorter)}
          sorter
        />
        <Table.Column<ICompany>
          title="Actions"
          dataIndex="actions"
          render={(_, record) => (
            <Space>
              <EditButton hideText size="small" recordItemId={record.id} />
              <ShowButton hideText size="small" recordItemId={record.id} />
              <DeleteButton hideText size="small" recordItemId={record.id} />
            </Space>
          )}
        />
      </Table>
    </List>
  );
};

Similarly, let's add the create, edit and jobs crud pages under the pages folder.

Next, let's define the resources in <Refine> (App.tsx):

      <Refine
           dataProvider={dataProvider}
           ...
            resources={[
                {
                   name: "companies",
                   list: CompanyList,
                   create: CompanyCreate,
                   edit: CompanyEdit,
                   show: CompanyShow,
                },
                {
                   name: "jobs",
                   list: JobList,
                   create: JobCreate,
                   edit: JobEdit,
                   show: CompanyShow,
                },
           ]}
    />