Tree captures not appearing in dev/test admin panel — S3 upload pipeline broken

[cynthiabondi]

Describe the bug
Tree captures uploaded via the Android app (v2.1.3, dev build) are not appearing in the dev or test admin panels. The app is confirmed to register uploads to S3 (wallet registration data is visible), but capture/tree data is not flowing through the backend pipeline. This blocks all current mobile testing efforts.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Build and install the dev variant of the Android app (branch: release-2.1.3_candidate-1)
2. Register a new account and upload tree captures
3. Wait 5–10 minutes
4. Check test-admin.treetracker.org/verify and the dev admin panel for the capture

Expected behavior
Uploaded tree captures appear in the admin panel within 1–5 minutes

Actual behaviour
No captures appear. Wallet registration data reaches S3 but captures/trees do not.

Evidence

• Test admin panel: last tree capture dated 30 Jul 2025
• Dev admin panel: last tree capture dated 12 Aug 2023
• S3 dev bucket shows wallet registration for email but captures and trees fields are null
• Multiple testers affected: email shows 50 test trees uploaded
• Dev admin inbox/messaging feature is also non-functional, blocking messaging tests
• App code is unchanged from the working production version, issue is backend-side

Desktop (please complete the following information):
App version | 2.1.3 (dev build)-- | --
Branch | release-2.1.3_candidate-1
S3 identity pool | eu-central-1:3f3395cc-3835-470d-8fd9-c96304a6b07f
Admin panels | test-admin.treetracker.org, dev admin

Next steps

• Investigate the S3-to-database pipeline for the dev and test environments
• Check why captures and trees are null while wallet_registrations succeed
• Investigate broken inbox/messaging feature in the dev admin panel
• Confirm whether a recent backend deployment broke the pipeline

[arnoldcastro5000]

1. Root cause identified — action required from infrastructure lead
   All errors on test-admin.treetracker.org/verify trace to a single root cause: a missing CORS configuration on the test query service.
   Errors observed (browser dev console):

CORS policy blocked: preflight request to https://test-k8s.treetracker.org/query/raw-captures fails — no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header present
net::ERR_FAILED: fetch to the same endpoint fails as a result
Uncaught TypeError: Failed to fetch in treeTrackerApi.js:57 → VerifyContext.js — unhandled promise rejection cascading from errors 1 and 2

What this means:

The query service at test-k8s.treetracker.org is running and reachable
The test-admin frontend is correctly calling the right endpoint
The test environment's query service is not configured to accept cross-origin requests from https://test-admin.treetracker.org
The dev environment works correctly, confirming this is test-environment-specific

This is not an S3 pipeline issue, not a data issue, and not an Android app issue.
Required fix: Add Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://test-admin.treetracker.org to the CORS config of the query service in the test K8s namespace — either via ingress annotation or service environment config.
Who needs to act: An infrastructure or DevOps lead with access to the test K8s namespace on DigitalOcean. No code changes required — this is a deployment configuration fix.

2. TEST DONE:
   dev-admin.treetracker.org/verify shows images when filtered with:
   start date: 03/17/2026
   end date: 03/18/2026

test-admin.treetracker.org/verify appears to be unresponsive with no error codes when filtered by the same dates as above.
test-admin.treetracker.org appears OK, but sometimes takes time to load.

3. BROWSER RESULT:
   browser devtools console:

verify:1 Access to fetch at 'https://test-k8s.treetracker.org/query/raw-captures?startDate=2026-03-15&endDate=2026-03-18&limit=24&offset=0' from origin 'https://test-admin.treetracker.org' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.

treeTrackerApi.js:57
GET https://test-k8s.treetracker.org/query/raw-captures?startDate=2026-03-15&endDate=2026-03-18&limit=24&offset=0 net::ERR_FAILED
getRawCaptures @ treeTrackerApi.js:57
(anonymous) @ VerifyContext.js:154
(anonymous) @ VerifyContext.js:139
(anonymous) @ VerifyContext.js:67

treeTrackerApi.js:57

Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Failed to fetch
at Object.getRawCaptures (treeTrackerApi.js:57:14)
at VerifyContext.js:154:26
getRawCaptures @ treeTrackerApi.js:57
(anonymous) @ VerifyContext.js:154
(anonymous) @ VerifyContext.js:139
(anonymous) @ VerifyContext.js:67

[arnoldcastro5000]

PR filed to fix this issue:

Greenstand/treetracker-query-api#393

[arnoldcastro5000]

Last images uploaded to AWS S3 buckets are dated March 21 for both the dev and test buckets. This seems to indicate there is no issue in uploading images to AWS

Dev bucket: link

Test bucket: link

[cynthiabondi]

Thank you for the update @arnoldcastro5000