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How do we leverage GraphQL Federation in NestJS v10+ for enterprise API gateways?

March 18, 2026

GraphQL Federation lets multiple NestJS microservices expose @key entities that a central gateway stitches together into one unified schema—perfect for enterprise API gateways handling complex domain data.​

Each subgraph service uses ApolloFederationDriver with @key(fields: "id") directives on entities, while the gateway uses ApolloGatewayDriver to compose the supergraph. NestJS v10+ makes this seamless with code-first or schema-first approaches.

Subgraph service:

Code

import { Module } from '@nestjs/common';
import { GraphQLModule } from '@nestjs/graphql';
import { ApolloFederationDriver } from '@nestjs/apollo';
import { Directive, ObjectType, Field, ID } from '@nestjs/graphql';

@ObjectType()
@Directive('@key(fields: "id")')
class User {
  @Field(() => ID)
  id: string;

  @Field()
  name: string;
}

@Module({
  imports: [
    GraphQLModule.forRoot({
      driver: ApolloFederationDriver,
      autoSchemaFile: true,
    }),
  ],
  providers: [/* your resolvers */],
})
export class UsersModule {}
      

Gateway service:

Code

import { Module } from '@nestjs/common';
import { GraphQLModule } from '@nestjs/graphql';
import { ApolloGatewayDriver } from '@nestjs/apollo';

@Module({
  imports: [
    GraphQLModule.forRoot({
      driver: ApolloGatewayDriver,
      gateway: {
        serviceList: [
          { name: 'users', url: 'http://users-service/graphql' },
          { name: 'products', url: 'http://products-service/graphql' },
        ],
      },
    }),
  ],
})
export class GatewayModule {}
      
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