Introduction

GoNest is a framework for building efficient, scalable Go server-side applications. It brings NestJS’s proven architectural patterns to the Go ecosystem, expressed idiomatically using Go interfaces, struct tags, and reflection-based dependency injection.

Philosophy

Go has excellent libraries for building web servers, but lacks an opinionated architectural framework. GoNest fills that gap by providing:

Modules for organizing code into cohesive feature boundaries
Dependency Injection for loose coupling and testability
Request Pipeline (middleware, guards, interceptors, pipes, filters) for clean separation of concerns
Convention over configuration so teams can focus on business logic

NestJS to Go Translation

GoNest is not a 1:1 port of NestJS. It adapts NestJS concepts to Go idioms:

NestJS (TypeScript)	GoNest (Go)
`@Controller('cats')`	`Controller` interface + `Register(Router)`
`@Injectable()`	Constructor functions resolved by DI
`@Module({...})`	`gonest.NewModule(ModuleOptions{...})`
`@Get()`, `@Post()`	`r.Get("/", handler)`, `r.Post("/", handler)`
`@Body()`, `@Param()`	`ctx.Bind(&dto)`, `ctx.Param("id")`
`@UseGuards()`	`r.UseGuards(guard)` or `.Guards()`
Decorators	`SetMetadata()` + `Reflector`
`NestFactory.create()`	`gonest.Create(AppModule)`

Execution Pipeline

Every HTTP request flows through:

Request
  → Middleware
    → Guards
      → Interceptors (before)
        → Pipes (validation/transformation)
          → Route Handler
        → Interceptors (after)
      → Exception Filters (on error)
    → Response

Zero External Dependencies

The core framework uses only the Go standard library. Optional modules add external dependencies only when needed (e.g., gorilla/websocket for WebSockets, go-redis for Redis).

Next Steps

Quick Start — Build your first GoNest application
Modules — Understand the module system
Controllers — Define HTTP endpoints