Pact is a family of frameworks for performing consumer-driven contract testing. It allows you to set up interactions between a consumer and a provider (i.e. a client and a server) and then verify them independently.
In concrete terms with an Ember app, it lets you mock your API with tools like Mirage or Pretender, then verify that your mock API behaves the same way as the real one without forcing you to test your app and your API at the same time!
Below is an annotated example of a simple Pact test. Note that, while this example uses Ember Data, Mirage and QUnit, you could just as easily write a comparable test with GraphQL, Pretender and Mocha.
import { module, test } from 'qunit';
import { setupTest } from 'ember-qunit';
import { setupPact, given, interaction } from 'ember-cli-pact';
module('Pact | People', function(hooks) {
setupTest(hooks);
setupPact(hooks, {
// Specify the names of the provider and consumer whose interactions are being set up.
// Normally these values would be defaulted from global configuration for your app.
provider: 'my-api',
consumer: 'my-app'
});
test('locating a person by ID', async function(assert) {
// Record the state(s) the provider should be in prior to the interaction under test.
// When verifying the generated pact document against the 'my-api' provider later,
// its own 'a person exists' state will be invoked with the same parameters.
given('a person exists', { id: '123', name: 'Alice' });
// Perform the interaction that this test is intended to record, in this case
// fetching a particular person record by ID.
let person = await interaction(() => this.store().findRecord('person', '123'));
// Verify that the response we received contained the data we expected, and that
// we interpreted it correctly.
assert.equal(person.get('id'), '123');
assert.equal(person.get('name'), 'Alice');
});
});After running this test, a file my-api.json capturing the interaction would be created:
{
"provider": {
"name": "my-api"
},
"consumer": {
"name": "my-app"
},
"interactions": [
{
"description": "locating a person by ID",
"providerStates": [
{
"name": "a person exists",
"params": {
"id": "123",
"name": "Alice"
}
}
],
"request": {
"method": "GET",
"path": "/people/123",
"headers": {
"Accept": "application/vnd.api+json"
}
},
"response": {
"status": 200,
"headers": {
"Content-Type": "application/vnd.api+json"
},
"body": {
"data": {
"type": "people",
"id": "123",
"attributes": {
"name": "Alice"
},
"relationships": {}
}
}
}
}
],
"metadata": {
"pact-specification": {
"version": "3.0.0"
}
}
}Additional tests of interactions with this provider would add further elements to the interactions array. This Pact contract can be used in your actual API's test suite to verify that its own response to the same request matches. See the Publishing Pacts section below for more details on possible workflows for managing shared contracts.
- A contract is a document describing the expected ways in which a consumer and a provider will interact with one another. A contract is tied to one consumer and one provider, and is composed of one or more interactions.
- The consumer is the system that initiates requests. In the case of ember-cli-pact, this is typically your Ember app.
- The producer is the system that fulfills request. In the case of ember-cli-pact, this is typically an HTTP API of some sort.
- An interaction captures the contents of a request from the consumer and the corresponding response from the provider. They may also include additional matching rules that loosen the definition of what constitutes an acceptable "replay" of that interaction.
To get started, run:
ember install ember-cli-pactDepending on your choice of mock provider, you'll likely also want to install either ember-cli-mirage or ember-cli-pretender.
All the contracts your consumer (i.e. Ember app) produces will be driven a set of Pact tests whose sole person is to perform and verify interactions with a mock provider. These tests will typically live within a tests/pact directory that is a peer to your other high-level test types (unit, acceptance, etc.).
You can find a few sample Pact tests in this repository: (QUnit | Mocha)
Whether in a QUnit test() or a Mocha it() block, ember-cli-pact exposes the following functions for setting up and recording an interaction:
import { given, interaction, getProvider, specifyMatchingRules } from 'ember-cli-pact';Calling given adds a requirement for the specified provider state to the interaction under test. Provider states represent scenarios that should be set up prior to verifying the interaction, such as creating a particular record or logging in as a user with particular permissions.
See Provider States section below for more details.
Calling interaction indicates that the wrapped request represents the interaction you're actually testing. This allows you to perform any other actions (e.g. fetching a record that you plan to test updating) without polluting the resulting contract. Every Pact test should contain exactly one interaction.
Note that interaction returns the result of its callback so that you can subsequently verify that the response was interpreted as expected.
let widgets = await interaction(() => store().findAll('widget'));
assert.equal(widgets.get('length'), 3);
assert.deepEqual(widgets.mapBy('name'), ['Foo', 'Bar', 'Baz']);Some interactions may involve data that's impossible to predict. Calling specifyMatchingRules specifies a set of rules for the interaction under test dictating what constitutes a successful match when verifying the interaction.
For instance, to ensure the response body has an id field the looks roughly like a UUID:
specifyMatchingRules({
response: {
body: {
id: regex(/[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12}/)
}
}
});The Matching Rules section below discusses how and when to use matching rules in more detail.
The getProvider function allows access to the mock provider instance for the current test. See the Mock Providers section below for further details.
Note that this addon relies on the simplified QUnit testing API, meaning it requires your ember-cli-qunit version to be at least 4.1.0-beta.2.
// tests/pact/people-test.js
import { module, test } from 'qunit';
import { setupTest } from 'ember-qunit';
import { setupPact, /* ... */ } from 'ember-cli-pact';
module('Pact | People', function(hooks) {
setupTest(hooks);
setupPact(hooks, {
// optional module-specific configuration here
});
test('...', function(assert) {
// ...
});
});// tests/pact/people-test.js
import { describe, it } from 'mocha';
import { setupTest } from 'ember-mocha';
import { setupPact, /* ... */ } from 'ember-cli-pact';
describe('Pact | People', function() {
setupTest({ integration: true });
setupPact({
// optional module-specific configuration here
});
it('...', function() {
// ...
});
});Provider states are named scenarios that the provider and consumer have an agreed-upon understanding of. They allow you to specify what kind of state the provider needs to be in before verifying a given interaction.
In the "people API" examples above, for instance, we reference an 'a person exists' provider state that takes id and name parameters. This provider state allows the consumer to ensure that a person record with the given details exists prior to actually testing the given interaction.
By default, calling given(name, params) only adds a record of the desired provided state to the interaction under test, but some mock providers may also take calls to given into account. For instance, the Mirage mock provider expects you to register a callback that will be executed when a given provider state is added, allowing you to make the corresponding change to your Mirage server state, e.g. server.create('person', params).
Note: version 2 of the Pact Specification only allows for a single provider state per interaction, and it doesn't support supplying parameters to that state. Given this, if you're working with a provider that verifies using Pact v2, you may need to have a larger set of provider states that encode specific hard coded information in their description.
Some interactions may involve data that's impossible to make static, like a generated ID for a newly-created record or a timestamp. For cases like these, replaying the same interaction may validly produce a slightly different result every time.
To account for this, Pact allows for defining a set of matching rules for various elements of an interaction. You can import and call specifyMatchingRules(...) in any Pact test to add matching rules to the current interaction, and the Mirage mock provider also allows you to generate matching rules for parts of the response body that correspond to model attributes.
A fully-specified set of matching rules for an interaction might look something like this:
specifyMatchingRules({
request: {
path: /* matcher for the request path */,
query: {
paramA: /* matcher for the values of query param A */,
paramB: /* matcher for the values of query param B */
},
header: {
headerA: /* matcher for the value of request header A */,
headerB: /* matcher for the value of request header B */
},
body: {
some: {
value: /* matcher for body.some.value */,
array: [
/* matcher for the first element of body.some.array */,
/* matcher for the second element of body.some.array */
]
}
}
},
response: {
header: {
headerA: /* matcher for the value of response header A */,
headerB: /* matcher for the value of response header B */
},
body: {
some: {
value: /* matcher for body.some.value */,
array: [
/* matcher for the first element of body.some.array */,
/* matcher for the second element of body.some.array */
]
}
}
}
});Note that every element of this structure is optional; you can specify rules for any individual piece of the interaction alone.
Pact provides several possible matchers to determine exactly how tested request/response elements compare to the recorded ones. All matchers are available to be imported from the module 'ember-cli-pact/matchers'.
type(): matches if the expected and actual value have the same type (e.g. both are strings, or both numbers, etc.)type({ min }): matches if the expected and actual value have the same type, and if that value represents a collection, that it has at leastminelementstype({ max }): matches if the expected and actual value have the same type, and if that value represents a collection, that it has at mostmaxelements
regex(regexpOrString): matches if the actual value matches the given regular expression, which is either a string or aRegExpinstanceequality(): matches if the actual and expected values are structurally equal ('abc'equals'abc',[1, 2, 3]equals[1, 2, 3], etc.). This is the default matching behavior.integer(): matches if the actual value is an integerdecimal(): matches if the actual value is a decimal number (i.e. has decimal places)allOf([matcher1, matcher2, ...]): matches if the actual value matches all of the given matchersanyOf([matcher1, matcher2, ...]): matches if the actual value matches any of the given matchersarrayElements(matcher): matches if all elements of the actual array value match the given matcherhashValues(matcher): matches if all children of the actual hash value match the given matcher
Pact tests can be run in one of two modes: write or verify.
When running in write mode, all preexisting contracts will be removed and the results of the test run will be written in their place. This is the default when running tests locally.
When running in verify mode, no new contracts will be written. Instead, the test server will verify that all generated contracts match the previously written ones on disk, failing the test suite otherwise. This is the default when running in CI (e.g. Travis or Circle).
The Pact mode can be overwritten via a configuration option or the PACT_MODE environment variable, e.g.
PACT_MODE=verify ember testBefore the details of an interaction are uploaded to the test server to be written or verified, you may wish to tweak the payload. The mock provider provides a beforeUpload hook that you can use to accomplish this.
The provided callback will receive a JSON representation of the interaction that you can tweak however you like. For instance, if you wish to exclude a certain request header from being recorded for a test, you could write:
getProvider().beforeUpload((interaction) => {
delete interaction.request.headers['X-Dont-Save-Me'];
});If you wanted to do this for every single interaction in your test suite, you could implement a custom mock provider:
export default class SecretiveProvider extends SomeBaseProvider {
constructor() {
super(...arguments);
this.beforeUpload((interaction) => {
delete interaction.request.headers['X-Dont-Save-Me'];
});
}
}Pact verification can be run against contracts persisted in a number of places, including as files on disk, in a git remote, or from a Web server. One commonly used option, however, is a Pact Broker.
The Pact Broker provides APIs for managing published contracts, tagging particular versions for use as provider testing targets, and firing webhooks to trigger a test suite when a contract is updated. It also provides bells and whistles like autogenerated network diagrams among your consumers and providers and repo badges to easily monitor contract verification state.
Before ember-cli-pact reaches a stable 1.0 release, the intent is to expose an ember-cli command for publishing the generated contracts to a Pact Broker.
The primary means of configuring ember-cli-pact is by defining an ember-cli-pact key in your config/environment.js containing a hash of the options here. In most cases, you can also pass overriding values for these options on a per-test basis setupPact.
enabled: whether ember-cli-pact and its dependencies should be included in the build; defaults totrueexcept when the build environment isproductionproviderName: the name of the provider under testconsumerName: the name of the consumer (i.e. your app) under test; defaults to the ember-cli project namemockProvider: the name of the mock provider that should be started up for each Pact test (see the Mock Providers section below); defaults to'mirage'serviceInjections: an array of service names that should be made available as a method of the same name in your Pact tests; defaults to['store']pactsDirectory: the location relative to the project root where contract files should be written; defaults to'pacts'mode: the write/verify mode ember-cli-pact should operate in; defaults to the value of thePACT_MODEenvironment variable if present, others'write'in development and'verify'in CI environments like Travis or CirclepactVersion: the version of the Pact specification that should be used; defaults to3(which is currently the only supported value)
All Pact tests are powered by a mock provider, which is responsible for capturing the details of the interaction that will ultimately be recorded. Out of the box, ember-cli-pact ships with mock provider implementations for Pretender and Mirage, but it's also possible to customize these or build your own.
The Pretender mock provider is fairly lightweight; it starts and stops a Pretender mock server for each Pact test, and exposes a way to map request handlers for that server.
To add handlers to the provider, call map() on it:
import { getProvider, interaction } from 'ember-cli-pact';
// ...
getProvider().map((server) => {
server.get('/test-route', () => [200, {}, 'ok']);
});
let response = await interaction(() => $.get('/test-route'));
assert.equal(response, 'ok');The Mirage mock provider integrates with ember-cli-mirage to simplify the process of managing mock resources and matching rules.
To enable the Mirage mock provider, you'll need to wrap your Mirage application serializer with the PactEnabled mixin:
// mirage/serializers/application.js
import { MyBaseSerializer } from 'ember-cli-mirage';
import { PactEnabled } from 'ember-cli-pact/mock-provider/mirage';
export default PactEnabled(MyBaseSerializer).extend({
});
// or, with ES6 syntax:
export default class ApplicationSerializer extends PactEnabled(MyBaseSerializer) {
}The Mirage mock provider requires that all provider states be declared using the providerState helper. Provider state definitions will be loaded from all modules tests/helpers/pact-provider-states, so within that directory you can organize them however you see fit.
When you activate a provider state with given(), the configured callback for that state will be invoked with the running Mirage server in order for the server to be set up in that state.
For instance, the 'a person exists' provider state described above could be declared like this:
// tests/helpers/pact-provider-states/people.js
import { providerState } from 'ember-cli-pact';
providerState('a person exists', (server, { id, name }) => {
server.create('person', { id, name });
});Then, when a test adds a requirement for the 'a person exists' provider state, the Mirage server will automatically be ready to serve the corresponding person record.
Mirage models can expose matching rules for attributes of those models wherever they appear in a response payload by defining a static matchingRules property on the model class.
For instance, supposing our Person model has a createdAt attribute that will vary in the real provider responses, the following would ensure that any Person payloads appearing in a response would have the appropriate matching rule configured:
export default Model.extend({}, {
matchingRules: {
createdAt: regex(/^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}T\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\.\d{3}Z$/)
}
});
// or, with ES6 class syntax and the class fields proposal:
export default class PersonModel extends Model {
static matchingRules = {
createdAt: regex(/^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}T\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\.\d{3}Z$/)
}
}To provide general matching rules for a given request, you can define a getMatchingRules(request, serialized) method. This method will receive the Pretender FakeRequest object and the serialized data for the response, and should return a hash of matching rules in the same format as the matchingRules() test method expects.
Note that getMatchingRules() will be invoked on the root serializer for a given request, so defining the method on the application serializer would apply to every response, while defining it on the person serializer would only generate matching rules for requests whose primary payloads were Person instances.
Matching rules returned from getMatchingRules() will be merged with any body rules generated based on model attributes.
To specify a custom mock provider, define a class in tests/helpers/pact-providers/<name>, and then set mockProvider: '<name>' in your ember-cli-pact configuration. This class should extend the MockProvider class exported from ember-cli-pact/mock-provider, and may override any of the methods defined there.
You can also customize the behavior of the built-in pretender and mirage providers by defining custom providers with the same name that extend from the base implementations, available at ember-cli-pact/mock-provider/{pretender,mirage}.