upskill-event-manager/wordpress-dev/bin/TEST-DATA-FINDINGS.md

Certificate Test Data Generation and Verification Findings

Overview

I've conducted a comprehensive effort to generate test data for the certificate system and verify its functionality, with a focus on the new attendee filtering feature. This document summarizes the findings, challenges, and recommendations.

Test Data Generation Results

Successfully Created:

• 3 New Test Events:
  • HVAC System Design Fundamentals (ID: 5641)
  • Advanced Refrigeration Technology (ID: 5668)
  • Building Automation Systems Workshop (ID: 5688)
• 58 Total Attendees with varied names and emails
• 47 Checked-in Attendees (required for certificate generation)
• 54 Total Certificates in the database
• 5 Revoked Certificates for revocation filter testing
• 34 Emailed Certificates for email status testing

Data Structure Verification:

Database verification confirms all data was properly created and stored:

Certificate Database Statistics:
Total certificates: 54
Total events with certificates: 6
Total trainees with certificates: 53
Total revoked certificates: 5
Total emailed certificates: 34
Average certificates per attendee: 1.02

Attendee Search Functionality

The new attendee search feature allows filtering by:

1. Attendee Name (full or partial)
2. Attendee Email (full or partial)

SQL Testing Results:

• Direct SQL queries successfully retrieve certificates based on attendee searches
• Name searches work for full names ("Ben Tester") and partial names ("Ben", "Smith")
• Email searches work for complete emails and domain patterns ("@gmail")
• Case-insensitive matching works as expected

API Method Findings:

The get_user_certificates() method in the Certificate Manager class showed discrepancies between:

1. What direct SQL queries found
2. What the API method returned when using the search_attendee parameter

These discrepancies appear related to:

• User ID filtering limiting results to events owned by the current user
• SQL JOIN conditions potentially not matching the expected behavior

Testing Infrastructure Challenges

Several challenges were encountered with the testing infrastructure:

1. Playwright Configuration Issues:

   • Unable to run automated E2E tests due to configuration conflicts
   • Errors with test structure and missing dependencies
   • Multiple Playwright versions detected

2. Server Access Limitations:

   • HTTP 302 redirects when accessing certificate pages without authentication
   • Direct web verification required manual testing

3. Environment-Specific Considerations:

   • Path differences between local development and staging server
   • Authentication required for most operations

Recommendations for Future Testing

1. E2E Testing Improvements:

   • Audit and fix Playwright configuration issues
   • Update page object models to properly support certificate testing
   • Create dedicated test cases for attendee search features

2. Certificate Manager API Enhancements:

   • Review and fix the get_user_certificates() method to ensure attendee searches work as expected
   • Add better debugging and logging for certificate queries
   • Consider separating event ownership checks from certificate queries

3. Test Data Management:

   • Create a more comprehensive test data reset/cleanup functionality
   • Add test data versioning to track changes
   • Develop specific test cases for each certificate feature

Conclusion

The test data generation was successful, creating a comprehensive dataset that covers various certificate scenarios. The attendee search functionality works at the SQL level, but there are potential issues with the API methods that may need addressing.

The test scripts created during this process provide a solid foundation for future testing efforts, and the documentation created will help guide manual testing until the automated testing infrastructure issues are resolved.