feat(websockets): allow manual acknowledgement handling with @Ack() decorator

[kim-sung-jee]

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PR Type

What kind of change does this PR introduce?

• Bugfix
• Feature
• Code style update (formatting, local variables)
• Refactoring (no functional changes, no api changes)
• Build related changes
• CI related changes
• Other... Please describe:

What is the current behavior?

Currently, NestJS's WebSocket implementation provides a convenient way to handle Socket.IO acknowledgements by returning a value from a @SubscribeMessage() handler. This implicit ack handling is great for simple, synchronous responses.

However, there is no way for developers to get a direct reference to the ack callback function within the handler. This makes it very difficult or impossible to implement advanced use cases, such as:

• Sending an acknowledgement after a complex asynchronous operation (e.g., a database call within a try...catch block).
• Conditionally sending an acknowledgement based on business logic.
• Having fine-grained control over the response payload for success and error cases.

This limitation is related to the issue described in #15286, where the ack callback is not correctly passed to the handler if declared as a parameter.

Issue Number: #15286

What is the new behavior?

This PR introduces a new @Ack() parameter decorator and enhances the underlying WebSocket infrastructure to allow for explicit, manual handling of acknowledgement callbacks, bringing it in line with the capabilities of socket.io.

1. New @Ack() Decorator: Developers can now inject the ack callback function directly into their @SubscribeMessage() handlers, similar to how @MessageBody() or @ConnectedSocket() work.

   @SubscribeMessage('update-item')
   handleUpdate(
     @MessageBody() data: any,
     @Ack() ack: (response: any) => void,
   ) {
     // Developer now has full control over the ack callback
     ack({ status: 'ok' });
   }

2. Automatic Ack Deactivation: When the @Ack() decorator is used in a handler, the framework's default behavior of automatically sending an ack based on the return value is disabled. This prevents accidental double-sends and provides clear, predictable behavior.

3. Preserved Implicit Behavior: Handlers that do not use the @Ack() decorator will continue to function as before. Returning a value will still trigger an implicit acknowledgement, ensuring full backward compatibility.

To achieve this, the following changes were made:

• A new WsParamtype.ACK was introduced.
• GatewayMetadataExplorer now detects the usage of @Ack() and adds an isAckHandledManually flag to the handler's metadata.
• WebSocketsController correctly propagates this flag to the platform adapter.
• IoAdapter now consumes this flag to conditionally skip the automatic ack call.

Does this PR introduce a breaking change?

• Yes
• No

Other information

[coveralls]

Pull Request Test Coverage Report for Build fa491690-4869-4361-8a59-e7d591cea9db

Details

• 23 of 23 (100.0%) changed or added relevant lines in 7 files are covered.
• No unchanged relevant lines lost coverage.
• Overall coverage increased (+0.03%) to 88.763%

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Totals
Change from base Build 5fabdacf-4d8f-4ad7-8aa2-61d6c0524836:	0.03%
Covered Lines:	7291
Relevant Lines:	8214

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💛 - Coveralls