As microservices architectures gaining more and more traction among developers, testing the interactions between services has become critical. Contract testing is something that can help developers to ensure that the communication between different services remains valid, and over the time if contract breaks, it can be alerted as soon as possible. One popular tool for contract testing in the Java ecosystem is Pact.
- What is Contract Testing? Contract testing ensures that both parties in a communication — the consumer (the service making a request) and the provider (the service responding) — are compatible in terms of their expectations of request and response structures. This differs from integration testing because it tests the boundaries between services, rather than combining the entire application stack.
- What is Pact? Pact is a consumer-driven contract testing tool that enables services (usually microservices) to define their expectations for interacting with other services. It ensures that both consumer and provider services adhere to a shared “contract” or set of expectations about the API they use to communicate. This contract is generated by the consumer and then verified by the provider.
2. Why Use Pact Testing?
- Prevent Integration Failures: If a consumer changes its expectations (e.g., it…
