Add Site Health test to detect excessive outbox activity#2928
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Add Site Health test to detect excessive outbox activity#2928
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Third-party plugins can call wp_update_post() on published posts at high frequency, flooding the outbox with redundant Update activities. This adds a Site Health test that detects abnormal outbox creation rates and exposes outbox stats in the debug info section for support visibility. Fixes #2927
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Pull request overview
This PR adds a new Site Health test to detect and alert administrators when excessive outbox activity is occurring, which may indicate problematic plugin behavior causing excessive federation updates.
Changes:
- Adds
test_outbox_rate()method to detect abnormal outbox creation rates with three severity levels (good ≤10/hr, recommended 11-50/hr, critical >50/hr) - Displays the top 3 most-active object URLs when elevated rates are detected to help identify the source
- Adds outbox statistics (total, pending, last-hour count) to the Site Health debug info section
Reviewed changes
Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| includes/wp-admin/class-health-check.php | Implements outbox rate detection logic, helper methods for data retrieval, and integrates stats into debug info |
| tests/phpunit/tests/includes/wp-admin/class-test-health-check.php | Adds comprehensive test coverage for the new outbox rate detection feature |
| .github/changelog/2928-from-description | Documents the patch release with changelog entry |
tests/phpunit/tests/includes/wp-admin/class-test-health-check.php
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Vary timestamps across created items in the test helper and add a test verifying items older than 1 hour are excluded from the rate data.
Replace get_outbox_rate_data() (which fetched posts capped at 100 and grouped by object ID) with get_outbox_rate_count() that uses a single WP_Query to count all outbox items in the last hour via found_posts. This fixes undercounting on high-activity sites and removes the unnecessary per-object grouping.
jeherve
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Feb 17, 2026
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This looks good, I only have minor comments.
tests/phpunit/tests/includes/wp-admin/class-test-health-check.php
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Co-authored-by: Jeremy Herve <jeremy@jeremy.hu>
Co-authored-by: Jeremy Herve <jeremy@jeremy.hu>
Co-authored-by: Jeremy Herve <jeremy@jeremy.hu>
The critical outbox rate test was asserting the old developer-jargon text `wp_update_post()` which was already removed from the description.
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Related #2927
Proposed changes:
test_outbox_rate) that queries recentap_outboxposts to detect abnormal creation rates — good (≤10/hr), recommended (11–50/hr), critical (>50/hr).Other information:
Testing instructions:
npm run env-test -- --filter=Health_Check— all 32 tests should pass.Changelog entry
Changelog Entry Details
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Add Site Health test to detect excessive outbox activity rates.