feat(sync): prevent stale data on retry, improve logging and error handling

[miguelpeixe]

All Submissions:

• Have you followed the Newspack Contributing guideline?
• Does your code follow the WordPress' coding standards and VIP Go coding standards?
• Have you checked to ensure there aren't other open Pull Requests for the same update/change?

Changes proposed in this Pull Request:

Prevent stale data on sync retries by storing the user ID instead of a contact data snapshot. When a retry executes, fresh contact data is fetched from the database, ensuring retries always push the latest reader state rather than potentially outdated information captured at the time of the original failure.

Improve ActionScheduler logging by writing per-integration success/failure messages to the AS log on both the initial sync and retries, making it easier to diagnose sync issues from the ActionScheduler admin UI.

Preserve AS action ID for queued syncs so that deferred syncs executed via run_queued_syncs() can still log against the correct ActionScheduler action.

Mark final retries as failed in ActionScheduler by throwing an exception when the last retry fails. In our custom UI, being explored in #4561, we'll be able to manually trigger a run for the failed action.

How to test the changes in this Pull Request:

1. Register a new reader and verify sync completes successfully
2. Check AS and confirm you get the successful sync logs in the data event handler action
3. Change your ESP config to use invalid credentials
4. Simulate a sync failure and confirm that AS logs show per-integration error messages.
5. Manually run every pending retry until it exhausts and confirm:
   • The newspack_sync_retry_exhausted action fires with user_id (not a contact array).
   • The final retry throws an exception, causing ActionScheduler to mark the action as "failed".
   • No further retries are scheduled.
6. Logged in as the reader, go through the email change flow
7. Before the next retry, restore the ESP configuration
8. Confirm the "Email_Change" sync works without regression on the next retry

Other information:

• Have you added an explanation of what your changes do and why you'd like us to include them?
• Have you written new tests for your changes, as applicable?
• Have you successfully ran tests with your changes locally?

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR updates Reader Activation contact sync retry behavior to avoid stale data on retries by scheduling retries using a WordPress user_id, and expands ActionScheduler logging to improve observability of integration sync outcomes.

Changes:

• Store user_id in ActionScheduler retry payloads and fetch fresh contact data at retry execution time.
• Add per-integration success/failure log messages to ActionScheduler logs, and preserve the AS action ID through deferred/queued sync execution.
• Update unit tests and WooCommerce mocks to reflect the new retry payload shape and customer email handling.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

File	Description
includes/reader-activation/sync/class-contact-sync.php	Switch retry payloads to user_id, add AS logging, and adjust retry execution/error behavior.
tests/unit-tests/reader-activation-sync.php	Update tests for user_id-based retries and last-retry exception behavior.
tests/mocks/wc-mocks.php	Extend WC_Customer mock to support billing email getters/setters used by contact building.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

includes/reader-activation/sync/class-contact-sync.php:261

• The newspack_sync_retry_exhausted payload was changed from including contact to user_id only. Downstream consumers (e.g. Alert_Manager::handle_sync_retry_exhausted() and record_failure()) still expect payload['contact']['email'], which will trigger PHP warnings and result in missing/incorrect alert context. Consider keeping backward compatibility by including contact (or at least contact_email) in the payload, or updating all listeners/tests to the new schema in the same PR.

			do_action(
				'newspack_sync_retry_exhausted',
				[
					'integration_id' => $integration_id,
					'user_id'        => $user_id,
					'context'        => $context,
					'retry_count'    => self::MAX_RETRIES,
					'reason'         => $error_message,
				]

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

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[chickenn00dle]

Looks good @miguelpeixe!

Left a few nonblocking comments, but this is good to go as far as I'm concerned.

[chickenn00dle]

Thanks for addressing the feedback @miguelpeixe!

This looks good 👍

[github-actions]

Hey @miguelpeixe, good job getting this PR merged! 🎉

Now, the needs-changelog label has been added to it.

Please check if this PR needs to be included in the "Upcoming Changes" and "Release Notes" doc. If it doesn't, simply remove the label.

If it does, please add an entry to our shared document, with screenshots and testing instructions if applicable, then remove the label.

Thank you! ❤️

[github-actions]

🎉 This PR is included in version 6.37.0-alpha.1 🎉

The release is available on GitHub release

Your semantic-release bot 📦🚀

[github-actions]

🎉 This PR is included in version 6.37.0 🎉

The release is available on GitHub release

Your semantic-release bot 📦🚀