pact-contract-testing

Consumer-driven contract testing verifies API compatibility by having consumers define expected interactions and publishing them to a central broker, where providers run verification in CI to ensure compatibility before deployment.

Can-i-deploy gatekeeping prevents unsafe deployments by checking the central broker to verify that both consumer and provider have successfully published and verified contracts before allowing code to move through CI pipelines.

Pact contract testing supports polyglot stacks including JS, Go, Java, Python, and Ruby, enabling multi-language consumer and provider support with provider verification integrated directly into CI pipelines.

A central broker is required for publishing and verifying pacts because it coordinates cross-team API contracts, stores matcher-based agreements, and enables can-i-deploy checks to prevent incompatible service deployments.

The best way to set up provider verification is by configuring explicit provider states and running verification in CI against pacts fetched from the central broker, ensuring matcher-based contracts are validated before deployment.

Consumer-driven contracts may not suit your needs if your architecture lacks distinct consumer-provider boundaries or if you cannot mandate a central broker for publication and CI-based provider verification.