How Online Booking Requests Match to Customers and Vehicles

Source: workshop-public-booking-api-gateway/lib/eventRequestUtils.js

• Vehicle plate lookup takes precedence — if plate matches, uses that vehicle's owner as the customer
• If no vehicle match, tries phone (checks mobile + phone fields), then email (case-insensitive)
• Returns most recently updated match — could match wrong customer if phone was reused
• Email uses ILIKE — "test@example.com" could match "test@example.com.au"
• Plate matching is case-insensitive but space-sensitive — "ABC123" matches "abc123" but not "ABC 123"
• Empty/whitespace fields normalize to NULL — skips that matching step entirely

Support scenarios

• "Booking went to wrong customer" → vehicle is owned by someone else, or phone number was reused
• "Vehicle didn't link" → rego entered with spaces/dashes that don't match