Digest notifications do not include all new comments

[raamdev]

This was tested using the Lite version from the dev branch as of 2015-12-10 16:16:05 EST.

Steps to reproduce this bug

• Install, activate, and enable Comment Mail Lite
• Logout and leave a comment on a post selecting "All Comments/Replies" and "Hourly Digest"
• Leave several additional comments on the same post with different email addresses (i.e., as different commenters)
• Wait for the Hourly Digest email that should be sent to the first commenter who selected "Hourly Digest"

Expected Behavior

The subscriber who selected "Hourly Digest" should get a digest email that includes a list of all the comments left on the post after the digest subscription was created.

Observed Behavior

The subscriber who selected the "Hourly Digest" receives an email that only contains the very last new comment that was posted, as opposed to all of the comments. Additionally, this notification makes no mention of "digest" at all and looks just like the email they would receive if they simply selected asap. (The title of the email that is received even says "New Comment on...", as opposed to "New Comments on...".)

[raamdev]

@kristineds @renzms @Reedyseth I could use some help attempting to reproduce the issue described above. 😄

[kristineds]

@raamdev I was able to reproduce this issue.

• Installed and enabled Comment Mail Lite v151224
• Posted as first commenter and selected "All Comments/Replies" and "Hourly Digest"
• First commented received an email (right after the confirmation email) that contains one comment that was posted right after. i.e. should be "digest" but received it as "asap".
• Waited for an hour or two to see if I'll still get a "digest" of the other comments, but didn't received anything only the first comment
• Title of the email that is received says "New Comment on.."

[raamdev]

@kristineds writes...

should be "digest" but received it as "asap".

Can you confirm what the "Deliver" option is set to when you edit that subscription in Comment Mail → Subscriptions? It should say "Hourly"...

[kristineds]

Can you confirm what the "Deliver" option is set to when you edit that subscription in Comment Mail → Subscriptions? It should say "Hourly"...

It says "Hourly" on my end for that subscription.

[raamdev]

@kristineds So it sounds like the problem is that the "Hourly" digest option isn't being passed properly to the routine that creates the subscription when someone selects "Hourly" on comment form? Would you mind running a few more tests to confirm that's the case? That should help us narrow this bug down quite a bit.

[raamdev]

@kristineds Oh, sorry, I totally misunderstood what you said the first time. :-) I realize now that it should be hourly.

Hmm, so it sounds like there might actually be a problem with the routine that processes the subscriptions to determine which ones require digests...

[jaswrks]

I haven't looked over this issue with any great detail yet, but it might help to know that Comment Mail doesn't have any hard-coded handler for digest notification templates. Comment Mail simply adapts the emails that it sends based on the number of comments it contains.

So for instance, if you subscribe to a digest, you should be getting (at most) one notification every period for which you subscribed. This can lead to each notification that you receive containing multiple comment notifications (in the form of a digest), but if it so happens that there was only one additional comment since your last notification came through, the email will only contain just the one, and the notification format reverts automatically back to what a standard one-off notification would look like in that scenario.

This is mostly handled by the email templates, where we have $is_digest.
https://github.com/websharks/comment-mail-pro/blob/151224/comment-mail-pro/includes/templates/type-a/email/comment-notification/subject.php#L40

[raamdev]

if it so happens that there was only one additional comment since your last notification came through, the email will only contain just the one, and the notification format reverts automatically back to what a standard one-off notification would look like in that scenario.

Ah, that's helpful to know. Thank you. Yes, it sounds like what we need to test is multiple comment notifications within an hour, so that we can trigger the digest email template (which only appears when more than one comment notification is available).

@kristineds Could you try testing that? You'll just need to run a test where one email address is subscribed to a post, and then generate several new replies (with a different email address) so that the digest subscriber receives more than one comment notification and then after 1 hour the digest email with a list of all the notifications should be shown.

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Once this has been confirmed, we should also publish a new KB Article for this that explains what Jason just clarified, i.e., that if there's only 1 notification, you'll see the regular asap notification template even if you selected one of the digest options. KB Article title: "Why don't I receive the digest notification?"