Contract testing validates API integrations between producer and consumer services by enforcing agreed-upon contracts before code merges. Unlike end-to-end tests or mocks, contracts verify both sides of integration points—producers validate their implementation against contracts and publish stubs, while consumers test against those stubs. This catches breaking changes (like renamed fields) immediately in PRs rather than in staging or production. Spring Cloud Contract enables this workflow through Maven plugins that generate tests from Groovy/YAML contracts, verify producer implementations, and provide stubbed responses for consumer testing without running full application servers.
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