upskill-event-manager/wordpress-dev/DEPLOYMENT-RESILIENCE.md

# Deployment and Testing Resilience Guide

This document outlines strategies and tools to make the HVAC Community Events plugin testing and deployment more resilient to changes and failures.

## Resilience Strategies

### 1. Automated Selector Verification

- Use the `verify-selectors.sh` script before each deployment to detect UI changes that could break tests.
- Run selector validation as part of CI/CD pipeline to prevent broken deployments.
- Create specific debug scripts for each critical page to easily identify selector changes.

```bash
# Run selector verification before deployment
./bin/verify-selectors.sh

# Run with auto-fix option to generate debug tests
./bin/verify-selectors.sh --fix

# Run in CI mode to fail the build on selector issues
./bin/verify-selectors.sh --ci
```

### 2. Pre-Deployment Validation

- Implement comprehensive pre-deployment checks with `pre-deploy-validation.sh`.
- Validate environment, plugin activation, test users, and critical functionality.
- Create deployment gates that prevent releases if validation fails.

```bash
# Run pre-deployment validation
./bin/pre-deploy-validation.sh

# Run in CI mode to fail the build on validation issues
./bin/pre-deploy-validation.sh --ci
```

### 3. Resilient Selectors

- Use attribute-based selectors instead of ID-based selectors.
- Implement multiple selector strategies with fallbacks.
- Add robust error detection with multiple approaches.
- Regularly validate and update selectors based on actual UI structure.

**Example of resilient selector implementation:**

```typescript
// Instead of:
private readonly usernameInput = '#user_login';

// Use:
private readonly usernameInput = 'input[name="log"], input[type="text"][id="user_login"], input.username';
```

### 4. Progressive Deployment

- Implement canary deployments to test changes on a subset of users.
- Create automated rollback mechanisms based on test results.
- Set up a staging-to-production promotion process with multiple validation steps.

**Recommended deployment flow:**

1. Deploy to staging and run full test suite
2. Run pre-deployment validation on production environment
3. Deploy to 10% of production servers
4. Run critical path tests on canary deployment
5. If successful, deploy to remaining servers
6. If tests fail, automatically roll back to previous version

### 5. Test Data Management

- Enhance test data scripts to ensure consistency.
- Create isolated test users for different test suites.
- Implement cleanup procedures to prevent test data pollution.
- Add data verification steps to ensure test preconditions are met.

**Test data management scripts:**

```bash
# Create test users for specific test suite
./bin/create-test-users.sh --suite=certificate-tests

# Cleanup test data after test runs
./bin/cleanup-test-data.sh

# Verify test data exists and is in expected state
./bin/verify-test-data.sh
```

### 6. Monitoring and Alerting

- Add comprehensive logging to tests and scripts.
- Implement test result dashboards with historical trends.
- Set up alerts for test failures and critical selector changes.
- Monitor test execution times to detect performance degradation.

**Monitoring implementation:**

1. Store test results in a structured format (JSON/CSV)
2. Track test execution times over time
3. Set up alerts for:
   - Failing tests
   - Increased test execution time
   - Selector changes
   - Plugin activation failures

### 7. Documentation and Knowledge Sharing

- Keep testing documentation up to date with latest best practices.
- Document common issues and solutions in a centralized location.
- Create a selector management system with version control.
- Maintain a database of UI components and their selectors.

**Documentation structure:**

- `TESTING.md`: General testing guidelines
- `TESTING-STRATEGY.md`: Detailed testing strategy
- `DEPLOYMENT-RESILIENCE.md`: This document
- `TROUBLESHOOTING.md`: Common issues and solutions
- `SELECTORS.md`: Database of UI components and selectors

### 8. Recovery Procedures

- Create automated recovery scripts for common failures.
- Implement health check endpoints for services.
- Add self-healing capabilities to critical components.
- Document manual recovery procedures for complex failures.

**Recovery scripts:**

```bash
# Reset plugin state in case of activation issues
./bin/reset-plugin-state.sh

# Recover from database corruption
./bin/recover-database.sh

# Restore test data from backup
./bin/restore-test-data.sh
```

## Implementation Plan

To implement these resilience strategies, follow this phased approach:

### Phase 1: Immediate Improvements (1-2 weeks)

1. Update selectors in all page objects to use resilient patterns
2. Implement and use the selector verification script
3. Create basic pre-deployment validation script
4. Update documentation with best practices

### Phase 2: Enhanced Resilience (2-4 weeks)

1. Implement test data management scripts
2. Create monitoring dashboards for test results
3. Set up basic alerting for test failures
4. Develop recovery scripts for common failures

### Phase 3: Advanced Resilience (4-8 weeks)

1. Implement canary deployment process
2. Create automated rollback mechanisms
3. Set up comprehensive monitoring and alerting
4. Develop self-healing capabilities for critical components

## Conclusion

By implementing these resilience strategies, we can significantly improve the reliability of our testing and deployment processes, reduce the impact of failures, and ensure a more stable and consistent user experience.