Folder Structure
Nx can work with any folder structure you choose, but it is good to have a plan in place for the folder structure of your monorepo.
Projects are often grouped by scope. A project's scope is either the application to which it belongs or (for larger applications) a section within that application.
Move Generator
Don't be too anxious about choosing the exact right folder structure from the beginning. Projects can be moved or renamed using the @nx/workspace:move generator.
For instance, if a project under the booking folder is now being shared by multiple apps, you can move it to the shared folder like this:
❯
nx g move --project booking-some-project shared/some-project
Remove Generator
Similarly, if you no longer need a project, you can remove it with the @nx/workspace:remove generator.
❯
nx g remove booking-some-project
Example Workspace
Let's use Nrwl Airlines as an example organization. This organization has two apps, booking and check-in. In the Nx workspace, projects related to booking are grouped under a libs/booking folder, projects related to check-in are grouped under a libs/check-in folder and projects used in both applications are placed in libs/shared. You can also have nested grouping folders, (i.e. libs/shared/seatmap).
The purpose of these folders is to help with organizing by scope. We recommend grouping projects together which are (usually) updated together. It helps minimize the amount of time a developer spends navigating the folder tree to find the right file.
1apps/
2 booking/
3 check-in/
4libs/
5 booking/ <---- grouping folder
6 feature-shell/ <---- project
7
8 check-in/
9 feature-shell/
10
11 shared/ <---- grouping folder
12 data-access/ <---- project
13
14 seatmap/ <---- grouping folder
15 data-access/ <---- project
16 feature-seatmap/ <---- project
17Sharing Projects
One of the main advantages of using a monorepo is that there is more visibility into code that can be reused across many different applications. Shared projects are a great way to save developers time and effort by reusing a solution to a common problem.
Let's consider our reference monorepo. The shared-data-access project contains the code needed to communicate with the back-end (for example, the URL prefix). We know that this would be the same for all libs; therefore, we should place this in the shared lib and properly document it so that all projects can use it instead of writing their own versions.
1 libs/
2 booking/
3 data-access/ <---- app-specific project
4
5 shared/
6 data-access/ <---- shared project
7
8 seatmap/
9 data-access/ <---- shared project
10 feature-seatmap/ <---- shared project
11