Recover abandoned carts from MariaDB

The trigger

One read-only SELECT against MariaDB. Rowfire polls it for new rows, and the rule fires once per cart.

SELECT c.id AS cart_id,
       c.customer_id,
       c.item_count,
       c.total_amount,
       c.updated_at,
       c.updated_at + INTERVAL 4 HOUR AS abandoned_at
FROM carts c
WHERE c.checked_out_at IS NULL
  AND c.item_count > 0
  AND c.customer_id IS NOT NULL

An abandoned cart is the textbook absence: the customer simply stops, and no code runs. The query defines the moment instead. Table and column names are a sketch; adapt them to your schema.

The clock is abandoned_at, four hours after the cart last changed, and the key is cart_id, so each cart enters the campaign at most once. Carts without a known customer are left out, since there is no one to message.

The Braze side

Bind Braze track_event with external_id set to {{ customer_id }}, an event name like cart_abandoned, and item_count and total_amount as properties for the message.

MariaDB is a data source like PostgreSQL and MySQL: the trigger names it, and its query runs read-only in that database’s dialect.

For orders that did go through but got stuck, see orders paid but not fulfilled.