Can you catch REST API breaking changes before integration tests?

This article explores the challenge of detecting breaking changes in REST APIs, which are often discovered too late during the integration testing phase. The author analyzes the risks associated with backward compatibility and explains how utilizing OpenAPI specifications and consumer-driven contracts can help automate API verification during the early stages of development. The material highlights that passing tests does not always guarantee full compatibility with legacy clients and suggests methods to minimize errors when updating service interaction interfaces. This article is useful for developers and QA engineers looking to improve CI/CD processes and increase the reliability of microservice architectures by implementing API contract static analysis tools.