Repeated searches and refreshes asked every provider again, which is slow and runs into provider rate limits. Keep each provider's answer in Postgres, shared by all users, and reuse it until an admin-set lifetime runs out. Search screens mark saved results and offer a fresh search, and explicit refreshes stay live, falling back to a saved answer only when a provider fails. Empty answers are only kept for API providers that report failures reliably, and a cache-only request never calls a provider in cooldown. Book Dock's manual refetch stays live-only because the dock has nowhere to report a fallback. Released iOS builds keep working: every new request field is optional and newer clients gate it on the metadata-search-cache server feature.
BookOrbit - Server
NestJS 12 backend running on Fastify.
Running
From the repo root: pnpm dev (starts both server and client).
Server only: pnpm start:dev (from this directory).
The server loads environment variables from .env in this directory. See .env.example for all available options.
API docs
OpenAPI docs are disabled by default. Enable them with SWAGGER_ENABLED=true:
SWAGGER_ENABLED=true pnpm start:dev
Then open:
- Swagger UI: http://localhost:6262/api/docs
- OpenAPI JSON: http://localhost:6262/api/docs-json
Dev watch uses a Nest config without the Swagger metadata generator so the
server does not restart immediately after startup. Full build output still uses
the standard Nest config and generates src/metadata.ts for enriched docs.
Module structure
Each feature is a self-contained NestJS module under src/modules/:
src/modules/
├── auth/ Authentication (JWT, OIDC, password reset)
├── book/ Book CRUD, cover images, file serving
├── library/ Library management
├── scanner/ File system scanning, metadata extraction
├── collection/ User book collections
├── smart-scope/ Saved search/filter views
├── user/ User management
├── role/ Roles and permissions (RBAC)
├── metadata/ Book metadata providers
├── kobo/ Kobo device sync
├── annotation/ Highlights and annotations
├── bookmark/ Reading position bookmarks
├── reader-preferences/ Per-user reader settings
├── cbz/ CBZ archive handling
├── path/ File path utilities
├── seed/ Database seeding
└── app-settings/ Global application settings
Database
Schema files live in src/db/schema/, one per domain. Migrations are generated by Drizzle Kit.
pnpm db:generate add_some_column # generate migration from schema diff
pnpm db:migrate # apply pending migrations
pnpm db:studio # open Drizzle Studio (DB browser)
Testing
pnpm test # unit tests
pnpm test:watch # unit tests in watch mode
pnpm e2e:run # app-smoke end-to-end test from server package
pnpm test:cov # unit tests with coverage
For suite-based e2e runs, run from the repository root:
pnpm run e2e:list
pnpm run e2e:all
pnpm run e2e:run -- scanner-scenarios
Quality
pnpm type-check # TypeScript checks (no emit)
pnpm lint:check # Non-mutating lint checks
pnpm lint:fix # Auto-fix lint issues
pnpm format:check # Prettier check
pnpm format # Prettier write
Key conventions
- Constructor injection with
@Inject(DB)for the Drizzle instance. - Config via
@nestjs/confignamed configs (appConfig,dbConfig,authConfig,storageConfig,mailerConfig). Never readprocess.envdirectly in services. - DTOs use
class-validatordecorators. GlobalValidationPiperejects unknown fields. - Throw NestJS
HttpExceptionsubclasses (NotFoundException,ForbiddenException, etc.) - never rawError. - All user-owned data is scoped by
userId. Service methods check ownership.