pact: publish pact to broker before or after finalizing

Question

There are 2 steps I need to take at the end of my consumer test:

1. finalize the mock server
2. publish the pact to the broker.

At first, I was publishing before finalizing, like this:

var opts = {
  //broker info
}
pact_node.publishPacts(opts).then(() => {
  provider.finalize()
}).catch(() => {
  console.error("Could not publish pact!")
  provider.finalize()
})

What I realized about this is that finalize() is where the pact file gets written. So if I do things in this order, the first time I run the test, nothing gets published, and each subsequent time, I publish the version of the contract from the previous run. So I tried reversing the order, to finalize the mock server first, then publish:

provider.finalize().then(() => {
  console.log("Publishing pact to broker")
  pact_node.publishPacts(opts)
}).catch(() => {
  console.error("Could not finalize provider!")
})

But with this, neither the then nor the catch block ever gets executed. I don't get any messages printed to the console.

What is going on? Which order should I call these functions in, and why is the second order not working?

Answer 1

Publishing pacts should be definitely done after the finalize.

I would recommend you do it in a separate task altogether, not in the same code as the tests, as it should only be done from the CI, not from your local machine.