Creating Custom Executors

Creating Executors for your workspace standardizes scripts that are run during your development/building/deploying tasks in order to enable Nx's affected command and caching capabilities.

This guide shows you how to create, run, and customize executors within your Nx workspace. The examples use the trivial use-case of an echo command.

Creating an executor

Your executor should be created within the tools directory of your Nx workspace like so:

happynrwl/
├── apps/
├── libs/
├── tools/
│   └── executors/
│       └── echo/
│           ├── executor.json
│           ├── impl.ts
│           ├── package.json
│           └── schema.json
├── nx.json
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.base.json

schema.json

This file describes the options being sent to the executor (very similar to the schema.json file of generators). Setting the cli property to nx indicates that you're using the Nx Devkit to make this executor.

1{
2  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/schema",
3  "type": "object",
4  "cli": "nx",
5  "properties": {
6    "textToEcho": {
7      "type": "string",
8      "description": "Text To Echo"
9    }
10  }
11}

This example describes a single option for the executor that is a string called textToEcho. When using this executor, specify a textToEcho property inside the options.

In our impl.ts file, we're creating an Options interface that matches the json object being described here.

impl.ts

The impl.ts contains the actual code for your executor. Your executor's implementation must export a function that takes an options object and returns a Promise<{ success: boolean }>.

1import { ExecutorContext } from '@nrwl/devkit';
2import { exec } from 'child_process';
3import { promisify } from 'util';
4
5export interface EchoExecutorOptions {
6  textToEcho: string;
7}
8
9export default async function echoExecutor(
10  options: EchoExecutorOptions,
11  context: ExecutorContext
12) {
13  console.info(`Executing "echo"...`);
14  console.info(`Options: ${JSON.stringify(options, null, 2)}`);
15
16  const { stdout, stderr } = await promisify(exec)(
17    `echo ${options.textToEcho}`
18  );
19  console.log(stdout);
20  console.error(stderr);
21
22  const success = !stderr;
23  return { success };
24}

executor.json

The executor.json file provides the description of your executor to the CLI.

1{
2  "executors": {
3    "echo": {
4      "implementation": "./impl",
5      "schema": "./schema.json",
6      "description": "Runs `echo` (to test executors out)."
7    }
8  }
9}

Note that this executor.json file is naming our executor 'echo' for the CLI's purposes, and mapping that name to the given implementation file and schema.

package.json

This is all that’s required from the package.json file:

1{
2  "executors": "./executor.json"
3}

Compiling and Running your Executor

After your files are created, compile your executor with tsc (which is available locally in any Nx workspace):

npx tsc tools/executors/echo/impl

This will create the impl.js file in your file directory, which will serve as the artifact used by the CLI.

Our last step is to add this executor to a given project’s targets object in your project's workspace.json or angular.json file. The example below adds this executor to a project named 'platform':

1{
2  //...
3  "projects": {
4    "platform": {
5      //...
6      "targets": {
7        "build": {
8          // ...
9        },
10        "serve": {
11          // ...
12        },
13        "lint": {
14          // ,,,
15        },
16        "echo": {
17          "executor": "./tools/executors/echo:echo",
18          "options": {
19            "textToEcho": "Hello World"
20          }
21        }
22      }
23    }
24  }
25}

Note that the format of the executor string here is: ${Path to directory containing the executor's package.json}:${executor name}.

Finally, you run the executor via the CLI as follows:

nx run platform:echo

To which we'll see the console output:

> nx run platform:echo
Executing "echo"...
Options: {
  "textToEcho": "Hello World"
}
Hello World

Debugging Executors

As part of Nx's computation cache process, Nx forks the node process, which can make it difficult to debug an executor command. Follow these steps to debug an executor:

1. Use VS Code's command pallette to open a Javascript Debug Terminal
2. Find the compiled (*.js) executor code and set a breakpoint.
3. Run the executor in the debug terminal

nx run platform:echo

Using Node Child Process

Node’s childProcess is often useful in executors.

Part of the power of the executor API is the ability to compose executors via existing targets. This way you can combine other executors from your workspace into one which could be helpful when the process you’re scripting is a combination of other existing executors provided by the CLI or other custom executors in your workspace.

Here's an example of this (from a hypothetical project), that serves an api (project name: "api") in watch mode, then serves a frontend app (project name: "web-client") in watch mode:

1import { ExecutorContext, runExecutor } from '@nrwl/devkit';
2
3export interface MultipleExecutorOptions {}
4
5export default async function multipleExecutor(
6  options: MultipleExecutorOptions,
7  context: ExecutorContext
8) {
9  const result = await Promise.race([
10    await runExecutor(
11      { project: 'api', target: 'serve' },
12      { watch: true },
13      context
14    ),
15    await runExecutor(
16      { project: 'web-client', target: 'serve' },
17      { watch: true },
18      context
19    ),
20  ]);
21  for await (const res of result) {
22    if (!res.success) return res;
23  }
24
25  return { success: true };
26}

For other ideas on how to create your own executors, you can always check out Nx's own open-source executors as well!

(For example, our cypress executor)