Is there a way to optionally match on something with V3/V4? In other words, I want to see if a value is either null or a specific type - like

null

or

integer

It is technically supported by the specification, via combined OR matchers • https://github.com/pact-foundation/pact-specification/tree/version-3?tab=readme-ov-file#allow-arrays-of-matchers-to-[…]efined-against-a-matcher-path • https://github.com/pact-foundation/pact-specification/tree/version-4?tab=readme-ov-file#matching-rules I believe it has only been implemented in the JVM core. (reference) Request in Pact-Reference to support AND/OR https://github.com/pact-foundation/pact-reference/issues/249 AND was supported via https://github.com/pact-foundation/pact-reference/pull/405 OR is discouraged and unimplemented due to this https://github.com/pact-foundation/pact-reference/issues/399#issuecomment-2104431926

This seems like a pretty common scenario though, doesn't it?

if you have everything as optional essentially, your server could return nothing and would happily pass verification, so you are suggested to do it with provider states and have explicit tests for each case you want to cover

> your server could return nothing and would happily pass verification your server still has to return the

key

though. If it doesn't do that, the contract would be broken

covered in the above link

The same goes for specifying “SOME_VALUE or null”. If all your provider verification test data returned nulls for this key, you might think that you had validated the “SOME_VALUE”, but in fact, you never had. You could get a completely different “SOME_VALUE” for this key in production, which may then cause issues.