Operations
In OpenAPI terms, paths are endpoints (resources), such as /users or /reports/summary, that your API exposes, and operations are the HTTP methods used to manipulate these paths, such as GET, POST or DELETE.
Tags
To attach a controller to a specific tag, use the @ApiTags(...tags) decorator.
@ApiTags('cats')
@Controller('cats')
export class CatsController {}
Headers
To define custom headers that are expected as part of the request, use @ApiHeader().
@ApiHeader({
name: 'X-MyHeader',
description: 'Custom header',
})
@Controller('cats')
export class CatsController {}
Responses
To define a custom HTTP response, use the @ApiResponse() decorator.
@Post()
@ApiResponse({ status: 201, description: 'The record has been successfully created.'})
@ApiResponse({ status: 403, description: 'Forbidden.'})
async create(@Body() createCatDto: CreateCatDto) {
this.catsService.create(createCatDto);
}
Nest provides a set of short-hand API response decorators that inherit from the @ApiResponse decorator:
@ApiOkResponse()@ApiCreatedResponse()@ApiAcceptedResponse()@ApiNoContentResponse()@ApiMovedPermanentlyResponse()@ApiFoundResponse()@ApiBadRequestResponse()@ApiUnauthorizedResponse()@ApiNotFoundResponse()@ApiForbiddenResponse()@ApiMethodNotAllowedResponse()@ApiNotAcceptableResponse()@ApiRequestTimeoutResponse()@ApiConflictResponse()@ApiPreconditionFailedResponse()@ApiTooManyRequestsResponse()@ApiGoneResponse()@ApiPayloadTooLargeResponse()@ApiUnsupportedMediaTypeResponse()@ApiUnprocessableEntityResponse()@ApiInternalServerErrorResponse()@ApiNotImplementedResponse()@ApiBadGatewayResponse()@ApiServiceUnavailableResponse()@ApiGatewayTimeoutResponse()@ApiDefaultResponse()
@Post()
@ApiCreatedResponse({ description: 'The record has been successfully created.'})
@ApiForbiddenResponse({ description: 'Forbidden.'})
async create(@Body() createCatDto: CreateCatDto) {
this.catsService.create(createCatDto);
}
To specify a return model for a request, we must create a class and annotate all properties with the @ApiProperty() decorator.
export class Cat {
@ApiProperty()
id: number;
@ApiProperty()
name: string;
@ApiProperty()
age: number;
@ApiProperty()
breed: string;
}
Then the Cat model can be used in combination with the type property of the response decorator.
@ApiTags('cats')
@Controller('cats')
export class CatsController {
@Post()
@ApiCreatedResponse({
description: 'The record has been successfully created.',
type: Cat,
})
async create(@Body() createCatDto: CreateCatDto): Promise<Cat> {
return this.catsService.create(createCatDto);
}
}
Let's open the browser and verify the generated Cat model:

File upload
You can enable file upload for a specific method with the @ApiBody decorator together with @ApiConsumes(). Here's a full example using the File Upload technique:
@UseInterceptors(FileInterceptor('file'))
@ApiConsumes('multipart/form-data')
@ApiBody({
description: 'List of cats',
type: FileUploadDto,
})
uploadFile(@UploadedFile() file) {}