Versioning

Hint This chapter is only relevant to HTTP-based applications.

Versioning allows you to have different versions of your controllers or individual routes running within the same application. Applications change frequently, and it's not unusual to introduce breaking changes while still needing to support the previous version of the application.

There are 4 types of versioning that are supported:

URI Versioning Type#

URI Versioning uses the version passed within the URI of the request, such as https://example.com/v1/route and https://example.com/v2/route.

Notice With URI Versioning the version will be automatically added to the URI after the global path prefix (if one exists), and before any controller or route paths.

To enable URI Versioning for your application, do the following:

const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
// or "app.enableVersioning()"
app.enableVersioning({
  type: VersioningType.URI,
});
await app.listen(process.env.PORT ?? 3000);

Notice The version in the URI will be automatically prefixed with v by default, however the prefix value can be configured by setting the prefix key to your desired prefix or false if you wish to disable it.

Hint The VersioningType enum is available to use for the type property and is imported from the @nestjs/common package.

Header Versioning Type#

Header Versioning uses a custom, user-specified request header whose value specifies the version to use for the request.

Example HTTP Requests for Header Versioning:

To enable Header Versioning for your application, do the following:

const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
app.enableVersioning({
  type: VersioningType.HEADER,
  header: 'Custom-Header',
});
await app.listen(process.env.PORT ?? 3000);

The header property should be the name of the header that will contain the version of the request.

Hint The VersioningType enum is available to use for the type property and is imported from the @nestjs/common package.

Media Type Versioning Type#

Media Type Versioning uses the Accept header of the request to specify the version.

Within the Accept header, the version will be separated from the media type with a semi-colon, ;. It should then contain a key-value pair that represents the version to use for the request, such as Accept: application/json;v=2. The key is treated as a prefix for the version, so the key property must be configured to include both the key and the separator.

To enable Media Type Versioning for your application, do the following:

const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
app.enableVersioning({
  type: VersioningType.MEDIA_TYPE,
  key: 'v=',
});
await app.listen(process.env.PORT ?? 3000);

The key property should be the key and separator of the key-value pair that contains the version. For the example Accept: application/json;v=2, the key property would be set to v=.

Hint The VersioningType enum is available to use for the type property and is imported from the @nestjs/common package.

Custom Versioning Type#

Custom Versioning uses any aspect of the request to specify the version (or versions). The incoming request is analyzed using an extractor function that returns a string or array of strings.

If multiple versions are provided by the requester, the extractor function can return an array of strings, sorted in order of greatest/highest version to smallest/lowest version. Versions are matched to routes in order from highest to lowest.

If an empty string or array is returned from the extractor, no routes are matched and a 404 is returned.

For example, if an incoming request specifies it supports versions 1, 2, and 3, the extractorMUST return [3, 2, 1]. This ensures that the highest possible route version is selected first.

If versions [3, 2, 1] are extracted, but routes only exist for version 2 and 1, the route that matches version 2 is selected (version 3 is automatically ignored).

Notice With the Express adapter, make your extractor return a single version (a string, or an array with one element). Selecting the highest matching version from a multi-element array does not reliably work in Express due to design limitations of the adapter — if you need that behavior, use the Fastify adapter, which supports both single-version and highest-matching-version selection.

To enable Custom Versioning for your application, create an extractor function and pass it into your application like so:

// Example extractor that pulls out a list of versions from a custom header and turns it into a sorted array.
// This example uses Fastify, but Express requests can be processed in a similar way.
const extractor = (request: FastifyRequest): string | string[] =>
  [request.headers['custom-versioning-field'] ?? '']
     .flatMap(v => v.split(','))
     .filter(v => !!v)
     .sort()
     .reverse()

const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
app.enableVersioning({
  type: VersioningType.CUSTOM,
  extractor,
});
await app.listen(process.env.PORT ?? 3000);

Usage#

Versioning allows you to version controllers, individual routes, and also provides a way for certain resources to opt-out of versioning. The usage of versioning is the same regardless of the Versioning Type your application uses.

Notice If versioning is enabled for the application but the controller or route does not specify the version, any requests to that controller/route will receive a 404 response status. Similarly, if a request is received containing a version that does not have a corresponding controller or route, it will also receive a 404 response status.

Controller versions#

A version can be applied to a controller, setting the version for all routes within the controller.

To add a version to a controller do the following:

@Controller({
  version: '1',
})
export class CatsControllerV1 {
  @Get('cats')
  findAll(): string {
    return 'This action returns all cats for version 1';
  }
}

@Controller({
  version: '1',
})
export class CatsControllerV1 {
  @Get('cats')
  findAll() {
    return 'This action returns all cats for version 1';
  }
}

Route versions#

A version can be applied to an individual route. This version will override any other version that would affect the route, such as the Controller Version.

To add a version to an individual route do the following:

import { Controller, Get, Version } from '@nestjs/common';

@Controller()
export class CatsController {
  @Version('1')
  @Get('cats')
  findAllV1(): string {
    return 'This action returns all cats for version 1';
  }

  @Version('2')
  @Get('cats')
  findAllV2(): string {
    return 'This action returns all cats for version 2';
  }
}

import { Controller, Get, Version } from '@nestjs/common';

@Controller()
export class CatsController {
  @Version('1')
  @Get('cats')
  findAllV1() {
    return 'This action returns all cats for version 1';
  }

  @Version('2')
  @Get('cats')
  findAllV2() {
    return 'This action returns all cats for version 2';
  }
}

Multiple versions#

Multiple versions can be applied to a controller or route. To use multiple versions, set the version to an array.

To add multiple versions do the following:

@Controller({
  version: ['1', '2'],
})
export class CatsController {
  @Get('cats')
  findAll(): string {
    return 'This action returns all cats for version 1 or 2';
  }
}

@Controller({
  version: ['1', '2'],
})
export class CatsController {
  @Get('cats')
  findAll() {
    return 'This action returns all cats for version 1 or 2';
  }
}

Version "Neutral"#

Some controllers or routes may not care about the version and would have the same functionality regardless of the version. To accommodate this, the version can be set to the VERSION_NEUTRAL symbol.

An incoming request will be mapped to a VERSION_NEUTRAL controller or route regardless of the version specified, including when the request contains no version at all.

Notice For URI Versioning, a VERSION_NEUTRAL resource would not have the version present in the URI.

To add a version neutral controller or route do the following:

import { Controller, Get, VERSION_NEUTRAL } from '@nestjs/common';

@Controller({
  version: VERSION_NEUTRAL,
})
export class CatsController {
  @Get('cats')
  findAll(): string {
    return 'This action returns all cats regardless of version';
  }
}

import { Controller, Get, VERSION_NEUTRAL } from '@nestjs/common';

@Controller({
  version: VERSION_NEUTRAL,
})
export class CatsController {
  @Get('cats')
  findAll() {
    return 'This action returns all cats regardless of version';
  }
}

Global default version#

If you don't want to provide a version for each controller or individual route, or if you want a specific version to act as the default for every controller/route that doesn't specify one, you can set the defaultVersion as follows:

app.enableVersioning({
  // ...
  defaultVersion: '1'
  // or
  defaultVersion: ['1', '2']
  // or
  defaultVersion: VERSION_NEUTRAL
});

Middleware versioning#

Middleware can also use versioning metadata to configure the middleware for a specific route's version. To do so, provide the version number as one of the parameters for the MiddlewareConsumer.forRoutes() method:

import { Module, NestModule, MiddlewareConsumer } from '@nestjs/common';
import { LoggerMiddleware } from './common/middleware/logger.middleware.js';
import { CatsModule } from './cats/cats.module.js';
import { CatsController } from './cats/cats.controller.js';

@Module({
  imports: [CatsModule],
})
export class AppModule implements NestModule {
  configure(consumer: MiddlewareConsumer) {
    consumer
      .apply(LoggerMiddleware)
      .forRoutes({ path: 'cats', method: RequestMethod.GET, version: '2' });
  }
}

With the code above, the LoggerMiddleware will only be applied to version '2' of the /cats endpoint.

Notice Middleware works with any versioning type described in this section: URI, Header, Media Type or Custom.