SmartBear, a leading provider of software development and visibility tools, has integrated the powerful contract testing capabilities of PactFlow with SwaggerHub, the company’s award-winning API development platform. The integrated solution allows architects and developers to gain previously unavailable visibility into how a proposed change would impact the use of an API by the consumer – instantly from the SwaggerHub Editor.  

“This integration is a decisive step toward our goal of a comprehensive API development lifecycle platform, combining the best of a design-first API development workflow and API contract testing, a modern approach to testing microservices,” said Sean Butler, VP Product Management, API at SmartBear. “Developers in teams across organizations of all sizes will benefit from having significantly increased visibility into how their APIs are being consumed, enabling them to catch breaking changes during design, reducing the time-to-market by preventing drift.” 

Microservices are now the norm in software development. According to the State of Software Quality API report, 61% of survey respondents chose microservices as the technology that will most likely drive API growth. The consumption of APIs has traditionally been a blind spot for all involved, from the API architects and designers to developers on both the consumer and provider teams. 

Many service platforms follow a common services model. While organizations who adopt this approach will gain efficiencies by standardizing key components of their system, they risk dampening benefits if dependencies between common service providers and specific business function consumers are not managed. Combining SwaggerHub and PactFlow allows common service providers to workshop changes so the impact to downstream consumers is understood before any code is written. 

Today, traditional testing strategies and practices do not provide the coverage required, resulting in: 1) high risk of breaking changes in production 2) slow-release cycles due to interdependent development teams, and 3) over reliance on complicated and expensive end-to-end testing. Contract testing is a modern approach for testing APIs that mitigates these issues. By pairing sound API standards and governance framework with a thorough API testing approach, teams of all sizes will be able to scale the delivery of quality software with speed.  

For more information on API contract testing, go to:

https://smartbear.com/blog/api-contract-testing-for-a-design-first-world/ 

For more information on the integration, register to attend the webinar, Stop Delaying Deployments: Detect While You Design with SwaggerHub + PactFlow, on Wednesday, February 1, 2023 in North America and Europe or Thursday, February 2, 2023 in Asia-Pacific at: https://smartbear.com/resources/webinars/unveiling-of-the-swaggerhub-pactflow-integration/