http.cat VS axios

Cats for other HTTP status codes can be found (or not found :-)) one level up

https://http.cat

Whenever we request data or services from a server, it can respond with status codes represented by numbers. You've probably heard of "404" which means "not found", but there are others like "201 - Created" and "500 - Internal Server Error." During one of my mentoring sessions, I was given a website that showcased all these status codes with kitten memes and a brief description. It was fantastic and helped me grasp each one of those statuses better.

import { Module, OnModuleInit } from '@nestjs/common' import { HttpModule, HttpService } from '@nestjs/axios' import { CatApi } from './cat-api.service' @Module({ imports: [ HttpModule.register({ // line A timeout: 1_000, maxRedirects: 2, baseURL: 'https://http.cat', }), ], providers: [ { provide: CatApi, useExisting: HttpService, // line B } ], exports: [CatApi], // line C }) export class CatApiModule implements OnModuleInit { constructor(private readonly httpService: HttpService) {} onModuleInit() { this.httpService.axiosRef.defaults.headers.common['Accept'] = 'application/json' } }

For example, when using the HttpModule module from @nestjs/axios we can use the dynamic module HttpModule.register() to configure our Axios instance. That module exposes a HttpService that has such configuration. But what if we want to have many Axios instances, each one with its own config and import everything in one module?

e.g. there's no reason in one of these systems where you couldn't just use Axios (or fetch) on its own to make outside requests. But instead, for no good reason, Nest wants to wrap Axios for you in a way that allows you to only really grab a single instance at a time. Which is not how Axios is meant to be used. This makes it so that you can't use the baseURL config option which is one of the most important options when constructing a client that's meant to work with a particular service. You could use a named injector but at this point there's no reason to not just pass around an instance other than Nest seemingly having this alternate pointless way of doing things. So basically, yes, in this case Nest pushes you into a pattern but that pattern isn't just ugly... it's inherently limiting to you while being more verbose and decreasing readability.

NestJs HttpModule