Hey folks, hope this is the right place for advice. I'm trying to set up two interactions in a single PACT (I think - unless I've misunderstoood the terminology). One is the success response, and one is 400 if headers are missing. I thought I'd be able to do this in one builder, but it doesn't work.

builder
            .given("default state")
            .uponReceiving("A request for GET limits")
            .path(URL_PAYMENTS_SERVICE_LIMITS)
            .method(HttpGet.METHOD_NAME)
            .headers(
                HEADER_X_INFO, getIdentifier(
                    id = FAKE_ID,
                    firstName = FAKE_FIRST_NUMBER,
                    lastName = FAKE_LAST_NAME
                )
            )
            .willRespondWith()
            .status(200)
            .body(PactDslJsonBody().apply {
                integerType("limits", 111111L)
            })
            .uponReceiving("A request for GET limits with no headers")
            .path(URL_PAYMENTS_SERVICE_LIMITS)
            .method(HttpGet.METHOD_NAME)
            .willRespondWith()
            .status(400)
            .body(PactDslJsonBody().apply {
                stringType("errorMessage", "error in request")
            })
            .toPact()

I can get my tests to work when I split this into two separate pacts. However, there's something about that that doesn't make sense to me. I basically just want an 'else' case should the request be missing the vital header info... Can anyone advise?

As Matt already said, it's better to put those in separate

@Pact

methods. Don't think of them as an 'else' to your happy path, think of them as a separate interaction instead. Having them separated also makes finding the root cause of an error much easier, because you can see exactly which interaction is defined where and which ones passes and fails. Tests should ideally fail for one reason only, and having if-then-else in your tests (either explicit or more implicit like here) is somewhat of an antipattern, at least to me

Think of the test as setup there as an AND. You are saying you expect to make a request to the URL_PAYMENTS_SERVICE_LIMITS and get a 200 and a 400 response.