upskill-event-manager/wordpress-dev/tests/e2e/TESTING-STRATEGY.md

# E2E Testing Strategy for HVAC Community Events

This document outlines the testing strategy and implementation details for the E2E test suite, with a focus on certificate functionality testing.

## Testing Architecture

### 1. Page Object Model (POM)

Our tests follow the Page Object Model pattern, which abstracts UI interactions into page-specific classes:

- **BasePage.ts**: Base class with common methods for all pages
- **LoginPage.ts**: Handles user authentication
- **DashboardPage.ts**: Interactions with the main dashboard
- **CertificatePage.ts**: Certificate generation and management functionality
- Additional page objects for other key pages

This approach provides:
- Reusable code for common UI interactions
- Centralized selectors for easier maintenance
- Better abstraction of implementation details

### 2. Test Organization

Tests are organized by feature area:

- **certificate-generation.test.ts**: Tests for generating certificates
- **certificate-management.test.ts**: Tests for certificate management operations
- **optimized-certificate-tests.ts**: Streamlined tests focused on specific features

### 3. Configuration and Utilities

- **Config.ts**: Centralized configuration parameters
- **VerbosityController.ts**: Controls logging and screenshot behavior
- **playwright.config.ts**: Playwright test runner configuration

## Testing Challenges and Solutions

### Multiple Playwright Versions

**Problem**: Multiple versions of Playwright and @playwright/test causing conflicts

**Solution**:
- Pin dependency versions in package.json
- Update to the latest stable version
- Remove duplicate dependencies

### Configuration Issues

**Problem**: Complex configuration with dependencies that may not be properly initialized

**Solution**:
- Simplified configuration focusing on reliability
- Reduced dependencies on external utilities
- Clear separation of configuration and test code

### Test Independence

**Problem**: Tests depending on global state or other tests

**Solution**:
- Self-contained tests that set up their own data
- Explicit cleanup of test data
- Clear test boundaries and responsibilities

## Certificate Testing Strategy

### 1. Data Setup

For certificate testing, we create:
- Test events with known properties
- Test attendees with varied properties
- Checked-in status for some attendees
- Test certificates with different states (emailed, revoked)

### 2. Feature Testing

Our certificate tests verify:
- Certificate generation for checked-in attendees
- Certificate viewing functionality
- Certificate emailing operations
- Certificate revocation operations
- Certificate filtering (by event, attendee, status)

### 3. Attendee Search Testing

The attendee search feature is tested with multiple patterns:
- Full name search (e.g., "Ben Tester")
- Partial name search (e.g., "Ben" or "Smith")
- Full email search (e.g., "ben@tealmaker.com")
- Partial email search (e.g., "@gmail.com")
- Case-insensitive matching

## Best Practices

1. **Test Independence**:
   - Each test should create its own test data
   - Tests should not depend on the state from other tests
   - Clean up test data when possible

2. **Explicit Waits**:
   - Use explicit waits rather than fixed timeouts
   - Wait for specific elements/conditions, not fixed times
   - Use appropriate timeouts for WordPress's slower operations

3. **Error Handling**:
   - Implement proper error handling in tests
   - Use try/catch blocks for potentially unstable operations
   - Take screenshots on failures for easier debugging

4. **Selector Stability**:
   - Use CSS selectors that are less likely to change
   - Prefer attribute selectors (e.g., `input[name="log"]`) over ID selectors (e.g., `#user_login`)
   - Use multiple selector strategies for critical elements with fallback mechanisms
   - Implement robust error detection with multiple selector checks
   - Centralize selectors in page objects for easier maintenance
   - Regularly validate selectors with debug tests when UI changes occur

5. **Descriptive Naming**:
   - Use clear, descriptive test names
   - Name page object methods according to user actions
   - Add comments for complex operations

## Optimized Testing Workflow

1. **Initial Setup**:
   ```bash
   # Install dependencies
   npm install
   
   # Install Playwright browsers
   npx playwright install
   ```

2. **Running Certificate Tests**:
   ```bash
   # Run optimized certificate tests
   npx playwright test tests/e2e/optimized-certificate-tests.ts --headed
   
   # Run with debugging
   npx playwright test tests/e2e/optimized-certificate-tests.ts --headed --debug
   ```

3. **Visual Verification**:
   - Screenshots are taken at key points during test execution
   - Visual verification can be done by examining the screenshots
   - The HTML report provides a visual overview of test results

## Future Improvements

1. **Data Generation**:
   - Create a more robust test data generator
   - Support for creating varied test scenarios
   - Better cleanup of test data

2. **Test Coverage**:
   - Expand tests to cover more edge cases
   - Add tests for error handling
   - Include mobile viewport testing

3. **Performance Optimization**:
   - Profile and optimize test execution time
   - Reduce unnecessary waits and operations
   - Improve parallel test execution where possible

4. **Reporting**:
   - Enhanced test reporting with more details
   - Integration with CI/CD systems
   - Slack/email notifications for test failures

5. **Selector Resilience**:
   - Debug scripts to verify selectors before running tests
   - Regular selector validation as part of CI pipeline
   - Automated UI change detection with selector recommendations
   - Selector versioning to handle multiple WordPress theme versions

6. **Deployment Resilience**:
   - Pre-deployment validation of critical selectors
   - Canary deployments with automatic rollback on test failures
   - Health check scripts for validating WordPress plugin environment
   - Automated recovery procedures for common failure scenarios
   - Snapshot testing for detecting unintended UI changes