Feature Request: Allow consumers to set individual interactions to "Pending" or "WIP" (not via branches/versions)

[JakeTheCorn]

Hi, big fan.

The product seems to assume (and even calls it "Best practice") to use feature branches. While I disagree on the "best practice" aspect, that is not particularly why I am here...

I need a way to allow our teams to not have to march in lock step while still specifying future interactions.

IE, a consumer should be able to specify an interaction they Will need, not only what they need now.

I'll call these "future interactions"

They should also be able to run 'can-i-deploy' without those "future interactions" preventing their release... while can-i-deploy still preventing release when non "future interactions" have no matching verification.

This would serve as communication to provider teams, as well as allowing consumer teams to keep moving while publishing next pacts to providers.

We don't have the need or desire to manage versioning at the moment, so we generally don't.

What I'm requesting is similar to...

(
    pact
                .pending_verification() # <---- this is the request
                .upon_receiving("a fake pending contract endpoint")
                .with_request("get", "/at-some-url")
                .will_respond_with(
                    200, body=Like({"timestamp_1": Format().iso_datetime}), headers={"Content-Type": "application/json"}
                )
)

Which, when the provider pulls and verifies, they will receive a json field similar to

{
   "isPending": true
}

Which would allow for warnings to be printed.

I've used and set up the enable_pending on the provider, but feel I'm still not getting what I would desire as a way to Tdd the service layer.

Any ideas?

Thanks much!

[elliottmurray]

Can't you just use the pytest xfail or similar feature? Adding to the pact spec is quite an onerous step

[elliottmurray]

Or https://docs.pact.io/pact_broker/advanced_topics/pending_pacts

[JakeTheCorn]

Thanks for the reply.

Good question... I have read that link through prior to opening this issue.

I'm not really wanting to skip the running of these tests as they're still valuable in the sense that they produce documentation for needed functionality.

IE, I want them to run, just that they can publish a pending sort of data point for the tools to integrate on.

[JakeTheCorn]

is there somewhere else I should be asking this to?

[mefellows]

I think what you're asking for is pact-foundation/pact-specification#73? If so, it needs to be added to the V4 interface being built (in the FFI integration work).

This currently is not supported in the V2 library.

[JakeTheCorn]

Thanks much @mefellows

Let me check that link