The service consumer is a component/deployable-unit that initiates HTTP requests to another component/deployable-unit, called the service provider.
The service provider is a component/deployable-unit that responds to the HTTP requests initiated from the service consumer.
An interaction is a single request and response pair.
A pact file, also called a pact contract, is a JSON file that contains a collection of interactions for a service consumer and service provider pair, representing the way the service consumer expects the service provider to behave in some specific situations.
The mock service provider is a component/application/service/deployable-unit that responds to an HTTP request from the _service consumer that mock out the actual service provider using a pact contract. It means that integration-like tests initiated from the service consumer can be run without requiring the actual service provider to be available.
The pact verification is the process by which the service provider receives and verify the pact file created by the service consumer. The service provider verifies a pact file by replaying all the interactions against its actual implementation and checking that the actual responses match those expected in the pact file.
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