NestJS - Default (wildcard) route?

Question

In my Angular app, if I load the home page / and then navigate to, say, /products, it works fine (it's a lazy-loaded module). But if now I reload the page, the browser makes a GET /products call to the server, which results in a 404.

The solution is to send index.html and the Angular app is back on rails. So in Express I do app.all("*", (req,res) => { res.sendFile("index.html") }) and it works.

How to do the same thing in Nest?

There is a @All decorator, but each controller in a given component handles a subroute, for instance @Controller("cats") will match /cats routes, so if I add @All in this controller, it will match only /cats/*, not *.

Must I really create a whole separate module with a controller, just for this? That's what I did

@Controller() // Matches "/"
export class GenericController {

    @All() // Matches "*" on all methods GET, POST...
    genericFunction(){
        console.log("Generic route reached")
    }
}

And in my main module :

@Module({
    imports: [
        ItemsModule, // Other routes like /items
        GenericModule, // Generic "*" route last
    ],
})

It works, but it seems overkill. Is this the way to go or is there a simpler trick?

Answer 1

So, will be best to use global-scoped exception filter.

async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestFactory.create(ApplicationModule);
  app.useGlobalFilters(new NotFoundExceptionFilter());
  await app.listen(3000);
}
bootstrap();

NotFoundExceptionFilter:

import { ExceptionFilter, Catch, NotFoundException } from '@nestjs/common';
import { HttpException } from '@nestjs/common';

@Catch(NotFoundException)
export class NotFoundExceptionFilter implements ExceptionFilter {
    catch(exception: HttpException, host: ArgumentsHost) {
        const ctx = host.switchToHttp();
        const response = ctx.getResponse();
        // here return `index.html`
    }
}

Maybe it will not work, will test later

Answer 2

You don't need to create a separated GenericModule. However, GenericController is fully valid and you approach is definitely a good one. The question is rather what would you like to achieve using this generic route. If handling "Route not found" error is your requirement, a better choice is an exception filter.