Example workflow

Examples on how Fellowship could be used for contract generation and validation.

Rest Contract Generation

1. Define request

First define the request that is used to access the target API. This includes the endpoint, method and potentially body and header. Header can also be dynamically filled in the validation phase.

2. Acquire expected JSON

Acquire or create the expected json, you can do this, for example, by executing the request against the target API or base it on your expectation of the API.

3. Generate contract

Generate contract, by using fellowships generate command in the command-line. Syntax is:

fellowship generate path_to_new_contract request_dict expected_json

4. Define type of contract

Define if the validation is depending on the type of the field or the value of the field. The automatically generated contract validates the field. If Fellowship shall evaluate the value of the field, the contract needs further modification.

5. Add field validation

If the value of the field is strict, add const to the fields that require to strict validation. However, if the field can take several values, use enum instead. In the enum field, you can give a list of all potential values and the validation ensures that the enum contains the value of the response. There are several other validators in Json Schema such as maximum, minimum refer to JSON Schema Reference for more information.

6. Are all endpoints covered?

If the coverage of endpoints is complete, you are ready to move to validation. Otherwise, repeat from step 1 until you reach satisfaction with the coverage.

Example Rest Contract Validation Pipeline

This is an example of how you can integrate fellowship into your testing pipeline

1. Get contracts from contract repo

Download the contracts from a remote repository. This is most common with consumer driven contract testing. This is, of course, optional and if the contracts are already inside the repository, you can skip this step.

2. Start the application

Start the application so that it can respond to the Rest requests.

3. Does contracts use jinja2 template

If you made the contracts using the jinja2 template, then Fellowship will render them at run time. This requires steps 4 and 5 to be performed.

4. Collect dynamic variables to config.yaml

Collect variables such as host, protocol and headers, the pipeline fills these in the config.yaml, so it can render the contracts. The config yaml can also be pre-made if that is preferred. For an example of the config.yaml check the default config.yaml. rest_config.yaml

5. Set env variable contract_test_config

Fellowship access the config.yaml through the environment variable contract_test_config, so you should set it to the config.yaml path.

6. Launch validation

Now Fellowship is ready to validate the contracts, this is done by executing:

fellowship validate path_to_contract_directory