Getting User Data by using Guards (Roles, JWT)

You can attach multiple guards together (@UseGuards(AuthGuard('jwt'), RolesGuard)) to pass the context between them. Then you will have access 'req.user' object inside 'RolesGuard'.

Additionally to your RolesGuard you need to use an AuthGuard.

Standard

You can use the standard AuthGuard implementation which attaches the user object to the request. It throws a 401 error, when the user is unauthenticated.

@UseGuards(AuthGuard('jwt'))

Extension

If you need to write your own guard because you need different behavior, extend the original AuthGuard and override the methods you need to change (handleRequest in the example):

@Injectable()
export class MyAuthGuard extends AuthGuard('jwt') {

  handleRequest(err, user, info: Error) {
    // don't throw 401 error when unauthenticated
    return user;
  }

}

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Why do this?

If you look at the source code of the AuthGuard you can see that it attaches the user to the request as a callback to the passport method. If you don't want to use/extend the AuthGuard, you will have to implement/copy the relevant parts.

const user = await passportFn(
  type || this.options.defaultStrategy,
  options,
  // This is the callback passed to passport. handleRequest returns the user.
  (err, info, user) => this.handleRequest(err, info, user)
);
// Then the user object is attached to the request
// under the default property 'user' which you can change by configuration.
request[options.property || defaultOptions.property] = user;