CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pactpact-jvm
PaChSu
PaChSu

Reputation: 307

Contract Tests for APIs which involve session or workflow

Hi I am trying to write Contract Tests for a product purchase workflow. So obviously i cannot call the Checkout API directly without calling Add to Cart API. But as I have observed the verification hits the paths individually might not be in the same order as listed in the Pact JSON File.

So how should I handle such scnenario which involve session management and workflow(meaning step1 shud be successful only then step2 will be success)

Thanks!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 150

Answers (1)

Beth Skurrie
Beth Skurrie

Reputation: 1318

Use provider states to set up the right data in the cart so that when you call checkout, you get the behaviour you want. Here's the documentation from pact.io on provider states.

Each interaction in a pact should be verified in isolation, with no context maintained from the previous interactions. Tests that depend on the outcome of previous tests are brittle and land you back in integration test hell, which is the nasty place you're trying to escape by using pacts.

So how do you test a request that requires data to already exist on the provider? Provider states allow you to set up data on the provider by injecting it straight into the data source before the interaction is run, so that it can make a response that matches what the consumer expects. The name of the provider state is specified in the given clause of an interaction in the consumer, and then used to find the block of code to run in the provider to set up the right data. If you need to stub a downstream system, or return an error response that is difficult to cause in the normal scheme of things (e.g. a 500), this is the place where you can set up stubs.

https://docs.pact.io/documentation/provider_states.html

In your case, this would look like:

Given an item has been added to the cart upon receiving a request to checkout it will respond with the checkout response....

As an aside, I would also imagine you'd want, given no items have been added to the cart upon receiving a request to checkout it will respond with some other type of response (empty cart? error?)

The provider will need to implement the provider state hook for an item has been added to the cart in the verification code, which will add the item to the cart by inserting it directly into the datasource.

Upvotes: 1

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