New all-in-one verification results publishing endpoint

[bethesque]

Thoughts on the design for the new "all in one" verification results publishing endpoint.

This is the current body for the 'pacts for verification' response.

{
      "_embedded": {
        "pacts": [
          {
            "shortDescription": "latest with tag prod",
            "verificationProperties": {
              "notices": [
                {
                  "when": "before_verification",
                  "text": "The pact at http://example.org/pacts/provider/Provider/consumer/Consumer%202/pact-version/0f22f551a422b027066db7635cad8bd8a59ac869 is being verified because the pact content belongs to the consumer version matching the following criterion:\n    * latest version tagged 'prod' (4.5.6)"
                }
              ]
            },
            "_links": {
              "self": {
                "href": "http://example.org/pacts/provider/Provider/consumer/Consumer%202/pact-version/0f22f551a422b027066db7635cad8bd8a59ac869/metadata/c1tdW3RdPXByb2Qmc1tdW2xdPXRydWUmc1tdW2N2bl09NC41LjY",
                "name": "Pact between Consumer 2 (4.5.6) and Provider"
              }
            }
          }
        ]
      },
      "_links": {
        "self": {
          "href": "http://example.org/pacts/provider/Provider/for-verification",
          "title": "Pacts to be verified"
        }
      }
    }
  }

I'm proposing to add a new "verification results key" to the pact description body to identify the verification results when they are posted back, and a new relation with the URL to send the results to.

{
      "_embedded": {
        "pacts": [
          {
           "verificationResultsKey" : "<base64 encoded JSON object that has all the information required to match up the results to the right version>",
            "shortDescription": "latest with tag prod",
            "verificationProperties": {
              "notices": [
                {
                  "when": "before_verification",
                  "text": "The pact at http://example.org/pacts/provider/Provider/consumer/Consumer%202/pact-version/0f22f551a422b027066db7635cad8bd8a59ac869 is being verified because the pact content belongs to the consumer version matching the following criterion:\n    * latest version tagged 'prod' (4.5.6)"
                }
              ]
            },
            "_links": {
              "self": {
                "href": "http://example.org/pacts/provider/Provider/consumer/Consumer%202/pact-version/0f22f551a422b027066db7635cad8bd8a59ac869/metadata/c1tdW3RdPXByb2Qmc1tdW2xdPXRydWUmc1tdW2N2bl09NC41LjY",
                "name": "Pact between Consumer 2 (4.5.6) and Provider"
              }
            }
          }
        ]
      },
      "_links": {
        "self": {
          "href": "http://example.org/pacts/provider/Provider/for-verification",
          "title": "Pacts to be verified"
        },"pb:publish-verification-results": {
           "href": "http://example.org/some-url"
         }
      }
    }
  }

Proposed format for publishing the verification results:

POST /some-results-publishing-url 
{
  "pacticipantName": "Bar",
  "pacticipantVersionNumber": "1",
  "branch": "main",
  "tags": [
    "a",
    "b"
  ],
  "buildUrl": "http://ci/builds/1234",
  "verificationResults": [
    {
      "key": "the key from the pacts for verification response",
      "contentType": "application/json",
      "content": "base64 encoded JSON test results in the same format that they currently are"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "logs": [{ "level": "info", message: "same stuff as the pact publishing endpoint with info, warnings and next steps"}]
  "_links": {
    "pb:pacticipant": { ... },
    "pb:version" : { ... }, 
    "pb:verification-results" : [
      { ... }
   ]
  }
}

I'm not super wed to the idea of encoding the test results, but I figure that if at some stage we make use of the encoding for the contracts, it would be pointless unless the results could be similarly encoded, because they would likely contain the same characters.

[bethesque]

@uglyog hoping for positive thoughts for this one too ;)

[uglyog]

I don't understand the need to base64 encode the test results.

[bethesque]

The only reason for that is that I made the pact content base64 encoded so we could have contracts that include non-base64 encoded characters in them. I figure if the contract has none base64 encoded stuff, then the test results would likely too. I'll be honest, I'm struggling to think of a concrete use case for this though. I just have some memories of people raising issues about encoding stuff in the past, so this seemed a way to future proof it all. Maybe the way to solve this is to have the interactions/results messages base64 encoded, rather than the entire JSON document. I feel like I've seen something about this in the pact spec?