What is Pactflow and what are its top alternatives?
Pactflow is a platform that helps teams implement contract testing and continuous delivery for microservices and APIs. It offers features such as versioning, collaboration tools, and reporting capabilities. However, one limitation is that it can be expensive for small teams or projects.
[Pact (https://pact.io/): Pact is an open-source tool for consumer-driven contract testing, helping teams ensure that services can communicate with each other.
[Postman (https://www.postman.com/): Postman is an API testing tool that provides a range of features for testing and debugging APIs, including automated testing and monitoring capabilities.
[Swagger (https://swagger.io/): Swagger is an open-source framework for designing, building, and documenting APIs, offering tools for API development and testing.
[Spring Cloud Contract (https://spring.io/projects/spring-cloud-contract): Spring Cloud Contract is a framework for writing contract tests for Spring applications, enabling teams to confirm that APIs will work as expected.
[WireMock (http://wiremock.org/): WireMock is a flexible API mocking tool that allows developers to simulate and stub HTTP requests, useful for testing APIs in isolation.
[Karate (https://intuit.github.io/karate/): Karate is an open-source tool for API testing that combines API testing, HTTP testing, and authentication into a single package, making it easier for teams to test APIs.
[Rest-Assured (http://rest-assured.io/): Rest-Assured is a Java library for testing RESTful APIs, offering a simple syntax for writing tests and verifying API responses.
[SoapUI (https://www.soapui.org/): SoapUI is an open-source tool for testing SOAP and REST APIs, providing features for functional testing, load testing, and security testing of APIs.
[Jest (https://jestjs.io/): Jest is a JavaScript testing framework commonly used for testing JavaScript code, including API testing, with features such as snapshot testing and mock functions.
[Assertible (https://assertible.com/): Assertible is a platform for API testing and monitoring, providing tools for creating automated API tests, running them in the cloud, and monitoring API performance.
Top Alternatives to Pactflow
- Postman
It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide. ...
- Istio
Istio is an open platform for providing a uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data. Istio's control plane provides an abstraction layer over the underlying cluster management platform, such as Kubernetes, Mesos, etc. ...
- Insomnia REST Client
Insomnia is a powerful REST API Client with cookie management, environment variables, code generation, and authentication for Mac, Window, and Linux. ...
- OpenAPI
It is a publicly available application programming interface that provides developers with programmatic access to a proprietary software application or web service. ...
- Retrofit
Retrofit turns your HTTP API into a Java interface
- Zuul
It is the front door for all requests from devices and websites to the backend of the Netflix streaming application. As an edge service application, It is built to enable dynamic routing, monitoring, resiliency, and security. Routing is an integral part of a microservice architecture. ...
- OpenAPI Specification
It defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to RESTful APIs which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of the service without access to source code, documentation, or through network traffic inspection. ...
- Apigee
API management, design, analytics, and security are at the heart of modern digital architecture. The Apigee intelligent API platform is a complete solution for moving business to the digital world. ...
Pactflow alternatives & related posts
- Easy to use490
- Great tool369
- Makes developing rest api's easy peasy276
- Easy setup, looks good156
- The best api workflow out there144
- It's the best53
- History feature53
- Adds real value to my workflow44
- Great interface that magically predicts your needs43
- The best in class app35
- Can save and share script12
- Fully featured without looking cluttered10
- Collections8
- Option to run scrips8
- Global/Environment Variables8
- Shareable Collections7
- Dead simple and useful. Excellent7
- Dark theme easy on the eyes7
- Awesome customer support6
- Great integration with newman6
- Documentation5
- Simple5
- The test script is useful5
- Saves responses4
- This has simplified my testing significantly4
- Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,34
- Easy as pie4
- API-network3
- I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis3
- Mocking API calls with predefined response3
- Now supports GraphQL2
- Postman Runner CI Integration2
- Easy to setup, test and provides test storage2
- Continuous integration using newman2
- Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable2
- Runner2
- Graph2
- <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>1
- Stores credentials in HTTP10
- Bloated features and UI9
- Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens8
- Poor GraphQL support7
- Expensive5
- Not free after 5 users3
- Can't prompt for per-request variables3
- Import swagger1
- Support websocket1
- Import curl1
related Postman posts
We just launched the Segment Config API (try it out for yourself here) — a set of public REST APIs that enable you to manage your Segment configuration. A public API is only as good as its #documentation. For the API reference doc we are using Postman.
Postman is an “API development environment”. You download the desktop app, and build API requests by URL and payload. Over time you can build up a set of requests and organize them into a “Postman Collection”. You can generalize a collection with “collection variables”. This allows you to parameterize things like username
, password
and workspace_name
so a user can fill their own values in before making an API call. This makes it possible to use Postman for one-off API tasks instead of writing code.
Then you can add Markdown content to the entire collection, a folder of related methods, and/or every API method to explain how the APIs work. You can publish a collection and easily share it with a URL.
This turns Postman from a personal #API utility to full-blown public interactive API documentation. The result is a great looking web page with all the API calls, docs and sample requests and responses in one place. Check out the results here.
Postman’s powers don’t end here. You can automate Postman with “test scripts” and have it periodically run a collection scripts as “monitors”. We now have #QA around all the APIs in public docs to make sure they are always correct
Along the way we tried other techniques for documenting APIs like ReadMe.io or Swagger UI. These required a lot of effort to customize.
Writing and maintaining a Postman collection takes some work, but the resulting documentation site, interactivity and API testing tools are well worth it.
Our whole Node.js backend stack consists of the following tools:
- Lerna as a tool for multi package and multi repository management
- npm as package manager
- NestJS as Node.js framework
- TypeScript as programming language
- ExpressJS as web server
- Swagger UI for visualizing and interacting with the API’s resources
- Postman as a tool for API development
- TypeORM as object relational mapping layer
- JSON Web Token for access token management
The main reason we have chosen Node.js over PHP is related to the following artifacts:
- Made for the web and widely in use: Node.js is a software platform for developing server-side network services. Well-known projects that rely on Node.js include the blogging software Ghost, the project management tool Trello and the operating system WebOS. Node.js requires the JavaScript runtime environment V8, which was specially developed by Google for the popular Chrome browser. This guarantees a very resource-saving architecture, which qualifies Node.js especially for the operation of a web server. Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, released the first stable version on May 27, 2009. He developed Node.js out of dissatisfaction with the possibilities that JavaScript offered at the time. The basic functionality of Node.js has been mapped with JavaScript since the first version, which can be expanded with a large number of different modules. The current package managers (npm or Yarn) for Node.js know more than 1,000,000 of these modules.
- Fast server-side solutions: Node.js adopts the JavaScript "event-loop" to create non-blocking I/O applications that conveniently serve simultaneous events. With the standard available asynchronous processing within JavaScript/TypeScript, highly scalable, server-side solutions can be realized. The efficient use of the CPU and the RAM is maximized and more simultaneous requests can be processed than with conventional multi-thread servers.
- A language along the entire stack: Widely used frameworks such as React or AngularJS or Vue.js, which we prefer, are written in JavaScript/TypeScript. If Node.js is now used on the server side, you can use all the advantages of a uniform script language throughout the entire application development. The same language in the back- and frontend simplifies the maintenance of the application and also the coordination within the development team.
- Flexibility: Node.js sets very few strict dependencies, rules and guidelines and thus grants a high degree of flexibility in application development. There are no strict conventions so that the appropriate architecture, design structures, modules and features can be freely selected for the development.
Istio
- Zero code for logging and monitoring14
- Service Mesh9
- Great flexibility8
- Resiliency5
- Powerful authorization mechanisms5
- Ingress controller5
- Easy integration with Kubernetes and Docker4
- Full Security4
- Performance16
related Istio posts
At my company, we are trying to move away from a monolith into microservices led architecture. We are now stuck with a problem to establish a communication mechanism between microservices. Since, we are planning to use service meshes and something like Dapr/Istio, we are not sure on how to split services between the two. Service meshes offer Traffic Routing or Splitting whereas, Dapr can offer state management and service-service invocation. At the same time both of them provide mLTS, Metrics, Resiliency and tracing. How to choose who should offer what?
As for the new support of service mesh pattern by Kong, I wonder how does it compare to Istio?
- Easy to work with16
- Great user interface11
- Works with GraphQL6
- Cross platform, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux4
- Opensource3
- Vim and Emacs key map2
- Preserves request templates2
- Does not have history feature0
- Do not have team sharing options4
- Do not store credentials in HTTP2
related Insomnia REST Client posts
We've tried a couple REST clients over the years, and Insomnia REST Client has won us over the most. Here's what we like about it compared to other contenders in this category:
- Uncluttered UI. Things are only in your face when you need them, and the app is visually organized in an intuitive manner.
- Native Mac app. We wanted the look and feel to be on par with other apps in our OS rather than a web app / Electron app (cough Postman).
- Easy team sync. Other apps have this too, but Insomnia's model best sets the "set and forget" mentality. Syncs are near instant and I'm always assured that I'm working on the latest version of API endpoints. Apps like Paw use a git-based approach to revision history, but I think this actually over-complicates the sync feature. For ensuring I'm always working on the latest version of something, I'd rather have the sync model be closer to Dropbox's than git's, and Insomnia is closer to Dropbox in that regard.
Some features like automatic public-facing documentation aren't supported, but we currently don't have any public APIs, so this didn't matter to us.
- Easy to read the template generated1
- The most popular api spec1
- Easy to learn1
- Supports versioning1
- Supports authentication1
- Supports caching1
related OpenAPI posts
We use Swagger Inspector in conjunction with our universal REST-API "Charon". Swagger Inspector makes testing edge-cases hassle-free and lets testing look easy. Swagger Inspector was also a great help to explore the Mojang-API, that we are dependent on, because it is the central repository for minecraft-account-data.
We previously used Postman but decided to switch over to Swagger Inspector because it also integrated seamlessly into Swagger UI, which we use for displaying our OpenAPI specification of said REST-API.
related Retrofit posts
Zuul
related Zuul posts
- API Documentation5
- API Specification5
related OpenAPI Specification posts
- Highly scalable and secure API Management Platform12
- Good documentation6
- Quick jumpstart6
- Fast and adjustable caching3
- Easy to use3
- Expensive11
- Doesn't support hybrid natively1