Testing Your Integration: Managing Positive and Negative Fixtures for NumDetect

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Establishing Contract Testing for Asynchronous Bulk Workflows

When integrating with asynchronous bulk processing services like NumDetect, standard unit tests are often insufficient. Because the service operates on a task-based lifecycle—where you submit a file via POST /api/v1/bulk-tasks and retrieve the outcome via GET /api/v1/bulk-tasks/{id}—your local data ingestion service must handle varying states gracefully.

To ensure your pipeline remains stable, you should implement a contract testing strategy using static fixtures. This allows you to simulate the processing, success, and failed states without relying on live network calls during your CI/CD pipeline.

Designing Your Fixture Strategy

Your ingestion service should be decoupled from the API's transport layer. By defining a set of JSON fixtures that mirror the expected response structure for each product (e.g., Global Carrier Detection vs. Phone Number Validation), you can validate your parsing logic independently.

Implementation Checklist

• Define Schema Boundaries: Create separate fixture files for each product family. For example, a carrier_detection_success.json should contain the expected fields: number, carrier, underlying_carrier, number_type, country_code, region, and city.
• Simulate State Transitions: Ensure your test suite includes a state-machine handler that transitions your local service state based on the status field returned by the API.
• Handle Empty/Failed States: Create a failed_task.json fixture to verify that your service correctly logs the error and triggers appropriate retry or alerting logic when the status is failed.
• Validate Data Integrity: Ensure your parser handles the E.164 format consistently across both positive and negative test cases.
• Mock the Async Polling Loop: Instead of real-time polling, mock the GET endpoint to return processing for the first two calls and a success fixture on the third call to verify your polling interval logic.

Handling Signal Specifics

When writing your integration tests, remember that each NumDetect product provides a specific signal. For example, the Global Carrier Detection output provides carrier context, whereas Phone Number Validation returns an activated signal. Avoid writing generic parsers that assume all responses have the same fields. Your contract tests should enforce that the parser only extracts the fields relevant to the specific task type requested.

Conclusion

By utilizing static fixtures, you can build a robust integration that is resilient to API changes and network instability. Focus your testing on the contract between your service and the API's response schema rather than the asynchronous transport itself. For detailed information on the current task states and response structures, always refer to the official API documentation.