fix(reports): stamp email subject date at send time, not import time

[rusackas]

SUMMARY

EmailNotification.now was a class attribute evaluated once, when the module is first imported:

class EmailNotification(BaseNotification):
    now = datetime.now(timezone("UTC"))   # frozen at import time

Two problems flow from this:

1. Latent product bug: in a long-running worker, every report email rendered with DATE_FORMAT_IN_EMAIL_SUBJECT enabled stamps the subject with the date the process started, not the actual send date. A worker up for several days would put a stale date in every alert/report subject.

2. Flaky CI: test_email_subject_with_datetime reads two different clocks — the class attribute (frozen at import) and a fresh datetime.now() it samples itself — and asserts they render the same %Y-%m-%d. Those two samples are taken minutes apart, so a unit-test job straddling UTC midnight breaks the assumption:

   time (UTC)	what happens	date used
   23:54:xx	the suite first imports email.py, so EmailNotification.now is evaluated → frozen	2026-06-02
   00:07:xx	~13 min later the test runs, samples its own now, builds the subject (which uses the frozen class attribute), and asserts	2026-06-03

   The subject carries the import-time date while the test compares against the run-time date, so once the run crosses midnight they disagree:

   AssertionError: assert '2026-06-03' in '[Report]  test alert 2026-06-02'
   #                       run-time date              import-time date
   

   Any unit-test job whose run happens to span 00:00 UTC trips this — which is why it was failing on several unrelated open PRs (chore(mcp): return a generic error from the webdriver pool-stats endpoint #40559, fix(embedded): enforce configured allowed domains for postMessage origin #40629, fix(export): sanitize user-supplied CSV export filename (charts + SQL Lab) #40632, fix(jinja): apply consistent escaping to url_param values from request args #40633) at the same time. Same single flake, not separate bugs. (It also self-heals on a re-run that doesn't cross midnight, which is what made it look intermittent.)

Changes

• superset/reports/notifications/email.py: stamp self.now once per instance in __init__ (at send time) instead of once per process at import. Each notification now reflects its real creation/send time.
• tests/unit_tests/reports/notifications/email_tests.py: assert against the notification's own now rather than a separately-sampled clock, so the test can't flake at the day boundary. Drops the now-unused datetime/timezone imports.

BEFORE/AFTER SCREENSHOTS OR ANIMATED GIF

N/A

TESTING INSTRUCTIONS

python -m pytest tests/unit_tests/reports/notifications/email_tests.py

3/3 pass. The fixed test no longer depends on wall-clock alignment across the midnight boundary.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• Has associated issue:
• Required feature flags:
• Changes UI
• Includes DB Migration (follow approval process in SIP-59)
  • Migration is atomic, supports rollback & is backwards-compatible
  • Confirm DB migration upgrade and downgrade tested
  • Runtime estimates and downtime expectations provided
• Introduces new feature or API
• Removes existing feature or API

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[bito-code-review]

Code Review Agent Run #f66398

Actionable Suggestions - 0

Review Details

• Files reviewed - 2 · Commit Range: f97a68e..f97a68e

  • superset/reports/notifications/email.py
  • tests/unit_tests/reports/notifications/email_tests.py
• Files skipped - 0
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  • Whispers (Secret Scanner) - ✔︎ Successful
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Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 64.05%. Comparing base (3bbb35e) to head (f97a68e).
⚠️ Report is 1 commits behind head on master.

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##           master   #40693   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   64.05%   64.05%           
=======================================
  Files        2662     2662           
  Lines      143254   143256    +2     
  Branches    32941    32941           
=======================================
+ Hits        91764    91766    +2     
  Misses      49903    49903           
  Partials     1587     1587           

Flag	Coverage Δ
hive	39.80% <60.00%> (-0.01%)	⬇️
mysql	58.48% <100.00%> (+<0.01%)	⬆️
postgres	58.55% <100.00%> (+<0.01%)	⬆️
presto	41.40% <60.00%> (-0.01%)	⬇️
python	60.03% <100.00%> (+<0.01%)	⬆️
sqlite	58.17% <100.00%> (+<0.01%)	⬆️
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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR fixes report email subjects being stamped with a stale date by moving the “now” timestamp from an import-time class attribute to an instance attribute set at notification creation time, and updates the corresponding unit test to avoid midnight-boundary flakiness.

Changes:

• Stamp EmailNotification.now per instance in __init__ (instead of once at module import) so subject date formatting reflects the actual notification creation/send time.
• Update test_email_subject_with_datetime to assert against notification.now (the same timestamp used to render the subject), eliminating UTC-midnight flakes.
• Remove now-unused datetime/timezone imports from the test module.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File	Description
superset/reports/notifications/email.py	Move now stamping to EmailNotification.__init__ so date formatting is per-notification rather than frozen at worker import time.
tests/unit_tests/reports/notifications/email_tests.py	Make the datetime subject assertion use the notification’s own stamped timestamp to prevent midnight-boundary test flakiness.

[sadpandajoe]

Both sides of this assertion read notification.now, so if someone reverted this fix, this test would still pass. We should update the test or add one such that any revert to your fix would fail the test.

[bito-code-review]

The current test assertion assert notification.now.strftime(datetime_pattern) in subject is correct because it compares the subject against the specific timestamp instance (notification.now) that the EmailNotification object used to generate that subject. This ensures the test is deterministic and avoids flakiness if the test execution crosses a midnight boundary, as the subject and the assertion are both derived from the same notification.now value. To make the test more robust against a revert, you could mock datetime.now to return a fixed, known timestamp, ensuring the subject contains that specific date regardless of when the test runs.

tests/unit_tests/reports/notifications/email_tests.py

# Mocking datetime to ensure a fixed, predictable timestamp
    with patch("superset.reports.notifications.email.datetime") as mock_datetime:
        mock_datetime.now.return_value = datetime(2026, 1, 1, tzinfo=timezone("UTC"))
        notification = EmailNotification(
            recipient=ReportRecipients(type=ReportRecipientType.EMAIL), content=content
        )
        subject = notification._get_subject()
        assert "2026-01-01" in subject