[zanata-devel] Testing clients and servers against each other with Pact

[David Mason]

fake-zanata-server is intended for two purposes:

 - To allow developers to work on clients without having to go through the significant hassle of deploying a Zanata server on JBoss locally. Someone can clone zanata-spa and run it while remaining in the context of the JavaScript build tools that are used to build the editor (installing node is the most manual part of the process).
 - To rapidly prototype additions and changes to the REST interface in a context that has very fast builds and a more straightforward way to declare the response bodies.

How well does Pact fit each of these purposes?

The idea of recording interactions is interesting - if fake-zanata-server has continued utility that might be a useful addition. A quick search shows several Pact packages on npm, so it may be easy to add. Recording client interactions with the real server could provide useful information as well. 

Cheers,

David Mason
Software Engineer
L10n Engineering

Red Hat, Asia-Pacific Pty Ltd
Level 1, 193 North Quay
Brisbane 4000

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sean Flanigan" <sflaniga at redhat.com>
> To: "zanata-devel" <zanata-devel at redhat.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, 16 December, 2014 12:45:06 PM
> Subject: [zanata-devel] Testing clients and servers against each other with	Pact
> 
> Right now we have two different "pretend" versions of the Zanata server
> (fake-zanata-server for JavaScript and stub-server for Java).  That's
> not even counting GWT's old dummy mode - is anyone using this now?
> 
> These dummy servers are taking up a fair amount of development and
> maintenance, but how much do they really tell us about the interaction
> between our clients and the real Zanata server?  And how much
> maintenance effort will they require as the server changes?
> 
> 
> Consumer-Driven Contracts[1] come up a lot when discussing
> microservices, but given the number of clients for Zanata server -
> 
>  - Java (current and old versions)
>  - Python (current and old)
>  - JavaScript - Zanata SPA
>  - clients written by others (eg PHP client, OpenStack integration)
> 
> - I think we could really benefit from using CDCs right now.
> 
> One of the microservices talks[2] at the YOW! conference included
> mention of Pact [3][4] by REA, which enables sharing of CDCs between
> client and server for HTTP services.
> 
> Beth Skurrie talked about Test Symmetry, which involves unit testing a
> consumer against a mock [like fake-server or stub-server], but
> *recording* the interactions to a pact file, then *verifying* the
> interactions in the pact file (or files) against the real provider.  I
> think this is a great idea, and a really important one.
> 
> Before putting much more effort into our fake servers, I really think we
> should try out Pact for Java [5] and/or for JavaScript [6].  It's
> possible there will be a bit of a learning curve, but I think the
> pay-off will be worth it.
> 
> 
> [1] http://martinfowler.com/articles/consumerDrivenContracts.html
> [2]
> http://yowconference.com.au/slides/yow2014/SkurrieBottcherEvans-MonolithsToMicroservices.pdf
> [3] https://github.com/bethesque/pact-specification (the spec)
> [4] https://github.com/realestate-com-au/pact (the original)
> [5] https://github.com/DiUS/pact-jvm (Java)
> [6] https://github.com/DiUS/pact-consumer-js-dsl (JavaScript clients)
> 
> PS ThoughtWorks has a similar library called Pacto, but I think Pact has
> more momentum, with a spec and implementations for multiple languages.
> 
> --
> Sean Flanigan
> 
> Senior Software Engineer
> Engineering - Internationalisation
> Red Hat
> 
> 
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