NestJS Enterprise Backend APIs · Lesson

Sagas for Long-Running Workflows

Coordinate multi-step processes reactively with RxJS-based CQRS sagas.

Why Sagas Exist

In an event-driven system, a single business outcome often requires many steps across multiple aggregates: place order, reserve stock, charge payment, schedule shipping. No single command handler owns that whole flow.

A Saga coordinates such a long-running workflow by listening to events and reacting with new commands. It is the glue that turns one event into the next step of a process.

Reactive: a saga is triggered by events, not called directly.
Stateless dispatcher: in NestJS, a CQRS saga maps an event stream to a command stream.
Decoupled: handlers stay small; the saga owns orchestration.

Sagas in @nestjs/cqrs

In @nestjs/cqrs a saga is a class method decorated with @Saga() that receives an RxJS Observable of all published events and returns an Observable<ICommand>.

Whatever commands the returned stream emits are automatically dispatched through the CommandBus. The framework subscribes to your stream for you.

Input type: Observable<any> (the global event stream).
Output type: Observable<ICommand>.
You shape the flow with RxJS operators like ofType, map, and mergeMap.

import { Injectable } from '@nestjs/common';
import { ICommand, ofType, Saga } from '@nestjs/cqrs';
import { Observable } from 'rxjs';
import { map } from 'rxjs/operators';
import { OrderCreatedEvent } from './events/order-created.event';
import { ReserveStockCommand } from './commands/reserve-stock.command';

@Injectable()
export class OrderSagas {
  @Saga()
  orderCreated = (events$: Observable<any>): Observable<ICommand> => {
    return events$.pipe(
      ofType(OrderCreatedEvent),
      map((event) => new ReserveStockCommand(event.orderId, event.items)),
    );
  };
}

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