Getting Started with PactFlow
PactFlow makes testing and deploying microservices at scale, simple and worry free for thousands of developers and testers around the world.
Utilising the Pact framework, create consumer and provider mocks in-platform or use a range of BYO tools to do so through the Bi-Directional Contract Testing feature
Create an accountβ
If you donβt already have a PactFlow account (have not created one or have not been invited to someone elseβs account) get started with our free Starter Plan
Learn about contract testingβ
Videosβ
New to contract testing? Watch this introductory level video series on contract-testing to understand what it's all about.
Workshopsβ
See contract testing in action by completing short and easy in-browser tutorials.
And when youβre ready to dive deeper, enroll in PactFlow University to dive deeper into the basics of contract testing through to advanced use cases including a CI/CD integration to help you scale
Essential readingβ
Here are some key resources to help you on your way:
- How Pact works
- Bi-Directional Contracts Guide
- The Pact Broker overview
- Versioning in the Pact Broker
- General Pact documentation
- You can find documentation on all the PactFlow screens under PactFlow User Interface.
Getting helpβ
We want to see you succeed with your contract testing journey. Hereβs some ways you can get extra support and have your questions answered:
Pact Slackβ
We also have a Slack workspace where you can chat with other community members and get general support with contract testing or PactFlow. Join us by registering here.
Please ask PactFlow specific questions in one of the #pactflow
channels below (maintained by SmartBear employees), and direct language specific questions to their respective channel such as #pact-jvm
for Java or JVM related questions (maintained by the community).
For PactFlow specific questions, see the following channels:
Getting Started with PactFlowβ
Join a contract testing and PactFlow expert for a monthly one hour drop-in session to learn the basics of contract testing with PactFlow and have your questions answered. See the next upcoming session and register to attend.
Stack Overflowβ
Stack Overflow is another place you can search for support, the following link will show all questions tagged with pact
.
SmartBear customer care and solutions engineersβ
If you need PactFlow specific technical support, contact us or for help with a PoC or plan options get in touch with sales.
Migrating from Pact Brokerβ
When you sign up to the SaaS PactFlow platform, we create a new hosted database for you. However, if you previously used the open-source Pact Broker for your contract testing needs we migrate the data so that nothing is lost. The process involves:
- Moving your existing database to the hosted environment associated with your PactFlow account.
- Udating it for full compatibility with PactFlow. This requires some scheduled down time for the service, including contract publishing and 'can-i-deploy' webhook.
To get started with migrating from Pact Broker contact us with the subject 'migrating from Pact Broker'.
Applies to SaaS (Hosted) PactFlow accounts only.
Using On-Premises and want to migrate to the SaaS platform? Check out our on-prem migration guide here.
Configuring your API tokenβ
NOTE: You cannot use your username and password to access the PactFlow API.
To publish or verify contracts you need to use one of the bearer tokens from the API Tokens section of your PactFlow settings page.
Open your PactFlow account in a browser and log in with your username and password. Click on the settings icon (the cog wheel icon at the top right of the screen).
You will see the API Tokens page with two tokens listed - a read only token, and a read/write token.
Contracts and verification results are generally only published from a CI machine, so use the read only token on a local development machine and keep the read/write token for CI.
While each of the following examples shows the use of a hardcoded token, note that you would normally be accessing the token via an environment variable or build parameter that is stored and provided in a secure manner (for example, a Jenkins build secret or a Travis encrypted environment variable).
To configure the token, click the tab for your chosen language:
Consumerβ
Although code samples are provided here for some languages to publish Pacts, users are recommended to use the Pact CLI tools, either via Docker, or Standalone.
Pact JS (Node JS)β
- Pact-JS documentation for all the pact publication options.
const { Publisher } = require("@pact-foundation/pact-cli")
const opts = {
pactBroker: 'https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io',
pactBrokerToken: '<TOKEN>',
consumerVersion: process.env.GIT_COMMIT
pactFilesOrDirs: ['./pacts'],
};
new Publisher(opts).publishPacts()
Java / JUnit 5β
- Pact-JVM documentation for all the pact publication options.
pact {
publish {
providerVersion = { '<GIT_COMMIT>' } //yes, this field name is correct :(
pactBrokerUrl = 'https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io/'
pactBrokerToken = '<TOKEN>'
}
}
Java / JUnit 4β
pact {
publish {
providerVersion = { '<GIT_COMMIT>' } //yes, this field name is correct :(
pactBrokerUrl = 'https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io/'
pactBrokerToken = '<TOKEN>'
}
}
Java / Gradleβ
pact {
publish {
providerVersion = { '<GIT_COMMIT>' } //yes, this field name is correct :(
pactBrokerUrl = 'https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io/'
pactBrokerToken = '<TOKEN>'
}
}
Rubyβ
- Pact Ruby documentation for all the pact publishing options.
require 'pact_broker/client/tasks'
PactBroker::Client::PublicationTask.new do | task |
task.consumer_version = ENV['GIT_COMMIT']
task.pact_broker_base_url = "https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io"
task.pact_broker_token = "<TOKEN>"
end
Dockerβ
- Pact CLI Docker documentation for all the pact publishing options.
docker run --rm \
-v ${PWD}:${PWD} \
-e PACT_BROKER_BASE_URL="https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io" \
-e PACT_BROKER_TOKEN="<TOKEN>" \
pactfoundation/pact-cli:latest \
publish \
${PWD}/pacts \
--consumer-app-version ${GIT_COMMIT}
Providerβ
Pact JS (Node JS)β
- Pact-JS documentation for all the pact verification options.
const { Verifier } = require("@pact-foundation/pact");
return new Verifier().verifyProvider({
provider: "<Your provider name here>",
providerBaseUrl: "http://localhost:8081",
// Fetch pacts from broker
pactBrokerUrl: "https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io/",
pactBrokerToken: "<TOKEN>",
publishVerificationResult: process.env.CI === "true",
providerVersion: process.env.GIT_COMMIT,
});
Java / JUnit 5β
- Pact-JVM documentation for all the pact verification options.
@Provider("<Your provider name here>")
@PactBroker(host = "<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io", scheme = "https",
authentication = @PactBrokerAuth(scheme = "bearer", username = "<TOKEN>", password = ""))
public class PactJUnitBrokerTest {
@TestTemplate
@ExtendWith(PactVerificationInvocationContextProvider.class)
void testTemplate(Pact pact, Interaction interaction, HttpRequest request, PactVerificationContext context) {
context.verifyInteraction();
}
}
Java / JUnit 4β
- Pact-JVM documentation for all the pact verification options.
@RunWith(PactRunner.class)
@Provider("<Your provider name here>")
@PactBroker(host = "<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io", scheme = "https",
authentication = @PactBrokerAuth(scheme = "bearer", username = "<TOKEN>", password = ""))
public class PactJUnitBrokerTest {
@TestTarget
public final Target target = new HttpTarget(8080);
}
Java / Gradleβ
- Pact-JVM documentation for all the pact verification options.
// To turn on the verification publishing,
// set the project property `pact.verifier.publishResults` to `true`
pact {
serviceProviders {
'<Your provider name here>' {
providerVersion = { '<GIT_COMMIT>' }
hasPactsFromPactBroker('https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io/',
authentication: ['Bearer', '<TOKEN>'])
}
}
}
Golangβ
_, err := pact.VerifyProvider(t, types.VerifyRequest{
ProviderBaseURL: fmt.Sprintf("http://127.0.0.1:%d", port),
BrokerURL: "https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io",
BrokerToken: "<TOKEN>",
PublishVerificationResults: true,
ProviderVersion: "<GIT_COMMIT>"
})
Rubyβ
- Pact Ruby documentation for all the verification options.
Pact.service_provider "<Your provider name here>" do
app_version ENV['GIT_COMMIT']
publish_verification_results ENV['CI'] == 'true'
honours_pacts_from_pact_broker do
pact_broker_base_url "https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io", { token: "<TOKEN>" }
end
end
.NETβ
PactNet documentation for all the pact verification options.
string version = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("GIT_COMMIT");
string branch = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("GIT_BRANCH");
var config = new PactVerifierConfig
{
...
};
IPactVerifier pactVerifier = new PactVerifier(config);
pactVerifier.ServiceProvider(providerName, new Uri(_providerUri))
.WithPactBrokerSource(new Uri(System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("PACT_BROKER_BASE_URL")), options =>
{
options.ConsumerVersionSelectors(
new ConsumerVersionSelector { DeployedOrReleased = true },
new ConsumerVersionSelector { MainBranch = true },
new ConsumerVersionSelector { MatchingBranch = true }
)
.ProviderBranch(branch)
.PublishResults(!String.IsNullOrEmpty(System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("PACT_BROKER_PUBLISH_VERIFICATION_RESULTS")), version, results =>
{
results.ProviderBranch(branch)
.BuildUri(new Uri(buildUri));
})
.EnablePending()
.IncludeWipPactsSince(new DateTime(2022, 1, 1));
options.TokenAuthentication(System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("PACT_BROKER_TOKEN"));
})
.Verify();
Dockerβ
version: "3"
services:
api:
image: "your image"
expose:
- "9292"
pact_verifier:
image: pactfoundation/pact-cli:latest
depends_on:
- api
environment:
- PACT_BROKER_BASE_URL="https://<YOUR_BROKER>.pactflow.io"
- PACT_BROKER_TOKEN="<TOKEN>"
command: >
verify
--provider-base-url http://api:9292
--provider "<Your provider name here>"
To run
docker-compose -f docker-compose-verify.yml up \
--build --abort-on-container-exit --exit-code-from pact_verifier
Supported Tools & Languagesβ
Pact is available in many different implementations, click the language icon to take you to the implementation guide or readme.
The guides cover the consumer-driven contract testing flow.
Consumer-Drivenβ
Bi-Directionalβ
PactFlow supports many different testing tools for Bi-Directional Contract Testing.
Click on a testing tool icon to see a demo application you can quickly run to get you started