Overview
Shops in this portfolio sell through catalogs and contact lines. Operations still needs to know when an order record appears. This automation pattern is how I wire order events to queued notifications.
Problem statement
Staff discovered orders late because nothing pushed the event outward.
Requirements and constraints
Fire after order persistence. Format a concise message. Send through email or a webhook the client operates. Retry failures. Do not double-send on webhook retries.
Proposed architecture
Event listener enqueues a job. The job reads order lines and customer contact fields already stored in MySQL. Configuration selects channels.
Database design
Orders and line items stay relational. A optional notifications log table records attempts for support.
API design and authentication
Outbound HTTP to messaging providers or inbound nothing — this is application-side automation.
Security
API tokens in environment variables. Message bodies include customer data only on channels the business already uses privately.
Performance
Queue workers scale separately from web requests so checkout stays fast.
Testing and deployment
Feature tests can fake the mailer and assert a job was dispatched. Production verification is a controlled test order.
Challenges and lessons
Idempotency when payment gateways replay callbacks.
Verified results
The pattern is documented here as engineering work, not as a specific client revenue claim.