[HOLD #27977][$500] Chat - Cursor is not displayed after 6 lines have been entered in compose box

[kavimuru]

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---

Version Number: v1.4.33-0
Reproducible in staging?: y
Reproducible in production?: y
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail:
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers):
Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856
Expensify/Expensify Issue URL:
Issue reported by: Applause internal team
Slack conversation:

Action Performed:

Pre-requisite: user must be logged in.

1. Go to any chat.
2. Tap on the compose box.
3. Tap on Enter until you have entered more than 6 lines.

Expected Result:

The cursor should be displayed no matter how many lines are being entered.

Actual Result:

The cursor disappears after more than 6 lines have been entered.

Workaround:

Can the user still use Expensify without this being fixed? Have you informed them of the workaround?

Platforms:

Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

• Android: Native
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Native
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

Bug6360353_1706581410106.Ryzu6837_1_.mp4

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[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @garrettmknight (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details.

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~01dd5527568c5f7f46

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @mananjadhav (External)

[melvin-bot]

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[aswin-s]

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

Cursor goes out of view after adding more than 6 lines

What is the root cause of that problem?

For small screen devices, the max number of lines for Composer input is set to 6 lines. On mobile safari beyond this height overflow scroll behaviour sets in. So even though the scroll height of TextArea increases the visible area of the TextArea is limited to 6 lines. So cursor moves beyond the visible area when new line is entered beyond 6 lines. That's the reason cursor gets hidden.

However when user enters any other character the scroll position is reset to the cursor position making the cursor visible again.

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

The scroll position of the Composer TextArea should be set to the cursor position at all times, even when the character entered is a new line. To acheive this we already have a hook updateMultilineInputRange that sets scrollTop to current scroll height of input. But for ComposerWithSuggestion it gets invoked only on mount as the dependency array of useEffect hook is set to [].

App/src/pages/home/report/ReportActionCompose/ComposerWithSuggestions/ComposerWithSuggestions.js

Lines 544 to 555 in 4e88eea

	useEffect(() => {
	// Scrolls the composer to the bottom and sets the selection to the end, so that longer drafts are easier to edit
	updateMultilineInputRange(textInputRef.current, shouldAutoFocus);
	if (value.length === 0) {
	return;
	}
	Report.setReportWithDraft(reportID, true);
	// eslint-disable-next-line react-hooks/exhaustive-deps
	}, []);

Instead add value to dependency array so that the scroll position is set whenever value changes. This ensures that scroll position is maintained even when new line is entered.

useEffect(() => {
  // Scrolls the composer to the bottom and sets the selection to the end, so that longer drafts are easier to edit
  updateMultilineInputRange(textInputRef.current, shouldAutoFocus);

  if (value.length === 0) {
    return;
  }

  Report.setReportWithDraft(reportID, true);
  
  // Add value as a dependency so that the hook runs on value change
  // eslint-disable-next-line react-hooks/exhaustive-deps
}, [value]); 

Result

Before	After
before.mp4	fix.mp4

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

None

[melvin-bot]

@garrettmknight, @mananjadhav Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[mananjadhav]

@aswin-s's proposal seems to be working. I can see both the videos are iOS native, @aswin-s but the header says Web on the right.

🎀 👀 🎀 C+ Reviewed.

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @danieldoglas, see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/7972 for more details.

[aswin-s]

@aswin-s's proposal seems to be working. I can see both the videos are iOS native, @aswin-s but the header says Web on the right.

🎀 👀 🎀 C+ Reviewed.

@mananjadhav Ah my bad! It was supposed to be before and after videos. Both videos are for iOS mWeb. Will fix the titles shortly.

[danieldoglas]

I think this looks good, but I wonder if adding value to the useEffect will cause performance degradation here.

@thienlnam would love your opinion on this case since you were working on the new composer!

[thienlnam]

Looks like this was created before live markdown was added - let's see if this is still reproducible first and then if it is, it would likely be independent of the live markdown changes and can be addressed seperately

[mananjadhav]

@kavimuru Based on the previous comment, can you please retest this?

[aswin-s]

MarkdownTextInput was added only for native platforms. This is still reproducible on main.

[danieldoglas]

Yes, but we're also merging the new markdown on web soon. Let's wait on that before trying to solve this issue. moving this to weekly until then.

[mananjadhav]

@danieldoglas @thienlnam Do we have any PR or issue that we can link against?

[danieldoglas]

The web implementation was merged yesterday in the react-live-markdown repo Expensify/react-native-live-markdown#32, and it looks like it's making it's way to web here #35837

[thienlnam]

Live markdown web has been merged!

[mananjadhav]

@kavimuru Is this still reproducible?

[thienlnam]

We actually ended up reverted the PR, but I'm going to update the issue it's held on so we can wait until then

[danieldoglas]

still on hold

[garrettmknight]

Still holding on #279877

[garrettmknight]

Looks like it's fixed, closing!