Getting Started

We designed the PactFlow API using the REST principles. Our API has predictable resource-oriented URLs, accepts and returns JSON-encoded bodies, and uses standard HTTP response codes, authentication, and verbs.

This documentation covers the APIs for both the PactFlow SaaS and on-premises distributions.

Hypermedia API

The PactFlow API is a Richardson Maturity Model Level 3 compliant hypermedia API using the Hypertext Application Language (HAL) convention for modelling relationships between resources.

When using the PactFlow API, specify the primary content type as application/hal+json, in the Accept header of all HTTP requests.

Hypermedia APIs provide the means to see and move between related resources via relations. For further information, see Requests and Responses.

Key Resources

The PactFlow API provides access to the following collections of resources and capabilities:

  • Audit logs
  • Branch management
  • Can I Deploy
  • Consumer and provider contracts
  • Environment management
  • Metrics
  • Integration management
  • Pacticipants (applications)
  • Permissions management
  • User and system preferences
  • Deployments and releases
  • User roles
  • Secrets
  • Team management
  • Access tokens
  • User management
  • Webhooks management

Prerequisites

You must have a valid PactFlow SaaS account or on-premises distribution. You can register for a free PactFlow account here.

Base Info

The PactFlow API is available at the same URL as the PactFlow web application and uses content-negotiation to return the appropriate media type - such as HTML or JSON.

Base URL Endpoint: The PactFlow API base endpoint is https://{account}.pactflow.io, where {account} is your unique account URL assigned when registering a PactFlow account. For example, if you login to https://xyz.pactflow.io this would be the API endpoint.

For on-premises deployments, this will be the URL to which your PactFlow instance is accessible.

Compatibility with the Pact Broker

The PactFlow API is compatible with the open source Pact Broker. All tooling that works with the Pact Broker will continue to work with PactFlow.

Differences

  1. PactFlow's role-based access model (RBAC) is applied to resources such as publishing pacts or managing webhooks. See Authentication and Authorization for more on this.
  2. Some APIs are enriched with additional information (such as the /metrics endpoint).

SaaS vs On-Premises Distributions

Some APIs are available only to the SaaS or On-Premises distributions. These resources will be flagged as such in their descriptions and/tags. If no designation is present, you may assume the API is available to both distributions.