Allow optional interactions in pact contracts - partial success scenarios

[madhavankca]

Hello there,

I have a pact with 3 interactions between a single consumer and provider. I want to make some interactions optional so that the pact passes if only a subset of interactions succeed (e.g., 1/3 or 2/3 interactions pass).

Current Behaviour

• Currently, all interactions in the pact must pass for the pact verification to succeed. If any single interaction fails, the entire pact verification fails.
• The provider expects @PactVerifyProvider(interaction-name) to be present for all the interactions mentioned in the consumer side.

Desired Behaviour

I would like the ability to mark certain interactions as optional, allowing the pact to pass even if some interactions fail, as long as the required/non-optional interactions succeed.

Questions

• Is this functionality already available?
• Are there recommended patterns for handling optional interactions?
• Is there a way the provider can also skip using the "@PactVerifyProvider(optional-interaction-name)" for the optional interactions?

[rholshausen]

If you are using V4 Pacts, you can mark an interaction as pending. It will not fail the build if it fails verification.

See https://github.com/pact-foundation/pact-specification/tree/version-4?tab=readme-ov-file#interactions