fix: messages content overlap when bottom sheet is shown

[kirillzyusko]

Details

A successor of #16356

The first step of react-native-keyboard-controller migration plan

Important

This PR relies on react-native-keyboard-controller (useKeyboardHandler) hook and KeyboardAvoidingView component).

How it works 🤔

This PR is iOS only for now. Other platforms are not affected. Also, in this explanation, we are talking about iOS only since on Android, iOS web and Android Web keyboard handling works differently.

Note

We're talking about default platform behavior. If we start to use react-native-keyboard-controller on Android - it'll disable all default keyboard handling by OS and will delegate the keyboard handling to us - so we will have identical behavior across both iOS/Android platforms.

But it may introduce additional issues (because we need to enter edge-to-edge mode - that would be good to do on entire app level, but it may bring some issues with StatusBar paddings, so everything has to be verified very carefully). That's why I think it would be better to handle in separate PR.

When we long press on a message, we want to be able to see it. It's easy when we have the keyboard closed. But gets tricky when the keyboard is open.

But first of all let's focus on the case when the keyboard is closed. User long press on the message, we render the bottom sheet (action sheet) with some options. If the message is higher than the height of bottom sheet - the message is visible. When the message is the last one (first from the bottom), it can be fully or partially covered by the bottom sheet.

Press to see videos

Message above bottom sheet	Message and bottom sheet overlap
300481023-9dc8be61-799d-470b-997f-ee5c5995fe19.mp4	300481277-0d0570cd-a85f-4cf5-8a91-6a3d5ad72c58.mp4

Also everything is tricky when we have keyboard open 😓

Press to see videos with keyboard

emoji picker instead of the keyboard (the messages should not jump)	showing a message which is covered by the keyboard and the bottom sheet
300482884-cbe3b610-fa85-4071-a3dd-bbc1a9d56e05.mp4	300483006-2e5ba833-c0fa-4fad-b383-b3854e5fa112.mp4

To achieve this goal we had to:

• use our own scroll component on iOS for FlatList of ReportListView (it uses reanimated to move the view by the offset)
• use KeyboardAvoiding so we're in sync with keyboard-avoiding style updates
• implement animated style handling using a state machine
• create ActionSheetAwareScrollViewContext to pass the transition function, so we can transition from one state to another by action triggered from different parts of the application

Below you can find more use cases that involves keyboard and other UI elements interactions:

Interactions with other UI elements

Add attachment	Call popover
300483536-04991f52-a41b-4d3e-abaf-12712b94f1aa.mp4	300483723-91b076a9-4c7a-4fbb-bc50-1e8194763e9d.mp4

Note

Call popover, bottom sheet and emoji picker are implemented as Modal windows and on iOS keyboard instantly gets hidden when modal window is shown. But "Attachment" popup is implemented not as modal, so for this type of transition we are using progress-based animations. When we press on plus -> popup is already shown under keyboard and we dismiss the keyboard. Overall the mechanism is similar to what we've used in the past, except the moment where we substitute translationY value - in case when keyboard disappear/appears we interpolate it by progress variable to achieve smooth transitions.

Technical details ⚒️

So in order to calculate the offset for the message, we:

1. Measure the message item in the window using ref.current.measureInWindow, so we can have height and y coordinate of the image
2. Measure the height of the bottom sheet using onLayout callback
3. Get the window height from Dimensions
4. Get safeArea.top since y coordinate doesn't get into account safe area
5. Calculate offset as elementOffset = (y + safeArea.top + itemHeight) - (windowHeight - popoverHeight)
   In order to animate item when they keyboard was open, we need to also know its height which is provided by useAnimatedKeyboard hook from react-native-reanimated, but we should always subtract safeArea.bottom from it since it's not part of the calculation for the offset, but only keyboardHeight.

Overall, the keyboard is the tricky part. On iOS, the keyboard doesn't resize the viewport. So for the content to not be covered by the keyboard, KeyboardAvoidingView is used. In React Native, KeyboardAvoidingView is implemented as a view that changes its height or resizes the children's view by the keyboard height. It's done using RN's Layout Animations. This results in the animation for the keyboard being applied using the native event emitter callback which uses the bridge. So open/close events of the keyboard will always be delayed that resulting in the delayed keyboard avoiding animation and, which is more important, scheduling layout animations.

In order to be consistent 100% of the time with animation and timings, we had to:

• use KeyboardAvoidingView from react-native-keyboard-controller for iOS. It reacts on keyboard height/state change on UI thread in the same frame, so we can schedule an update for styles in the next frame
• use just useDerivedValue for all the logic, since introducing useAnimatedReaction or having multiple shared values will delay updates for 1 frame, but we want to be 100% in sync with keyboard updates
• use paddingTop: translateY (because ScrollView is inverted).

Another important aspect of the implementation is the usage of the state machine for the animation. State machine allows us to specify the chain of events and how to handle them, and more importantly what actions to ignore, for example:

1. Initial state is idle. it can react to KEYBOARD_OPEN action
2. we open emoji picker. it sends EMOJI_PICKER_OPEN action
3. there is no handling for this action in idle state so we do nothing
4. we close emoji picker and it sends EMOJI_PICKER_CLOSE action which again does nothing
5. we open keyboard. it sends KEYBOARD_OPEN action. idle can react to this action by transitioning into keyboardOpen state
6. our state is keyboardOpen. it can react to KEYBOARD_CLOSE, EMOJI_PICKER_OPEN actions
7. we open emoji picker again. it sends EMOJI_PICKER_OPEN action which transitions our state into emojiPickerOpen state. now we react only to EMOJI_PICKER_CLOSE action
8. before rendering the emoji picker, the app hides the keyboard. it sends KEYBOARD_CLOSE action. but we ignore it since our emojiPickerOpen state can only handle EMOJI_PICKER_CLOSE action. so we write the logic for handling 9. hiding the keyboard but maintaining the offset based on the keyboard state shared value
9. we close the picker and send EMOJI_PICKER_CLOSE action which transitions us back into keyboardOpen state.

Fixed Issues

$ #10632
PROPOSAL: N/A

Tests

These steps were performed on all the platforms. The new behavior is iOS only for now.

1. Open chat
2. Long press on the first message - message should be pushed up to be displayed above the bottom sheet
3. Long press on the top message - if the message is not covered by the bottom sheet, it should stay in place
4. Long press on any attachment (document, message) should result in the same behavior
5. Pressing on reaction icon on the message should push the message above it too.
6. Long press on the message and then pressing on the reactions icon should open the reactions sheet and if the message is covered by the emoji picker it should animate the message so it's above the picker too

Before each next we make sure the keyboard is open:

1. Long press on the message should either animate the message above the bottom sheet or keep it in place
2. Messages should not "jump" because of keyboard hide/open when showing bottom sheet, emoji picker
3. Press on emoji picker in the composer, messages should stay in place even though the keyboard was closer - emoji picker is rendered instead of keyboard
4. Long press on the mesage, click on add reactions - close emoji reactions

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

Offline tests

Should not affect the offline state.

QA Steps

Same as Tests

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

PR Author Checklist

• I linked the correct issue in the ### Fixed Issues section above
• I wrote clear testing steps that cover the changes made in this PR
  • I added steps for local testing in the Tests section
  • I added steps for the expected offline behavior in the Offline steps section
  • I added steps for Staging and/or Production testing in the QA steps section
  • I added steps to cover failure scenarios (i.e. verify an input displays the correct error message if the entered data is not correct)
  • I turned off my network connection and tested it while offline to ensure it matches the expected behavior (i.e. verify the default avatar icon is displayed if app is offline)
  • I tested this PR with a High Traffic account against the staging or production API to ensure there are no regressions (e.g. long loading states that impact usability).
• I included screenshots or videos for tests on all platforms
• I ran the tests on all platforms & verified they passed on:
  • Android: Native
  • Android: mWeb Chrome
  • iOS: Native
  • iOS: mWeb Safari
  • MacOS: Chrome / Safari
  • MacOS: Desktop
• I verified there are no console errors (if there's a console error not related to the PR, report it or open an issue for it to be fixed)
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Screenshots/Videos

Android: Native

telegram-cloud-document-2-5460627828225625066.mp4

Android: mWeb Chrome

telegram-cloud-document-2-5460627828225625138.mp4

iOS: Native

1104ff6c-6eba-4295-a905-6caaaf3edf28.mp4

iOS: mWeb Safari

6eff007f-3c61-4f19-a60e-43f46d2f0e61.mp4

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

e5e28bd8-529f-4da3-8ae7-bff03bd14499.mp4

MacOS: Desktop

2c813bc9-6988-4fbc-8f36-3282c9cecd82.mp4

[melvin-bot]

@Santhosh-Sellavel Please copy/paste the Reviewer Checklist from here into a new comment on this PR and complete it. If you have the K2 extension, you can simply click: [this button]

[Santhosh-Sellavel]

@kirillzyusko Please tag reviewers to continue review here as this seems to be follow-up!

[kirillzyusko]

@cubuspl42 @shubham1206agra tagging you to continue your review here

cc @roryabraham

[cubuspl42]

I remind about a few minor comments from the old PR

[kirillzyusko]

I remind about a few minor comments from the old PR

Done 🙌 Would you mind to have a look again? 👀

[cubuspl42]

[x] I ran the tests on all platforms & verified they passed on:

* [x]  Android: Native

* [x]  Android: mWeb Chrome

* [x]  iOS: Native

* [x]  iOS: mWeb Safari

* [x]  MacOS: Chrome / Safari

* [x]  MacOS: Desktop

Recently, we had a similar situation where the code changes were supposed not to affect other platforms, but actually broke one of them.

Will this be different here? We don't know yet.

I know the checklist can be a pain, but let's try to actually follow it when it could be in the right.

[shubham1206agra]

Can you mark #37203 in the description?

[shubham1206agra]

@roryabraham Can you generate ad-hoc build here?

[cubuspl42]

Minor thing: also please change "PROPOSAL: GH_LINK_ISSUE(COMMENT)" to "PROPOSAL: N/A" or something like that

[kirillzyusko]

Recently, we had #37891 (comment) where the code changes were supposed not to affect other platforms, but actually broke one of them.

Will this be different here? We don't know yet.

I know the checklist can be a pain, but let's try to actually follow it when it could be in the right.

Yeah, it's very good point - let me record and attach videos from other platforms 👍

[kirillzyusko]

Yeah, it's very good point - let me record and attach videos from other platforms 👍

@cubuspl42 done, I've uploaded all videos!

[cubuspl42]

@kirillzyusko Can you reproduce this?

fix-message-content-overlap-ios-compressed.mp4

[kirillzyusko]

Can you reproduce this?

Let me try

Yes, I can. Thank you for catching this - I'll try to fix it 🙌

[kirillzyusko]

@cubuspl42 I think I fixed the problem (thank you again for reporting it 🙌 ). I patched a dependency - would you mind to pull latest changes, re-install node_modules (or simply run postinstall script) and re-test it? 👀

[cubuspl42]

Conflicts 🙁

[kirillzyusko]

@cubuspl42 resolved 🙂

[cubuspl42]

Sorry to be picky, but I found something else. I put actual effort to build upstream/main in a separate worktree and I tested on two virtual devices side by side (feature branch vs main) and as far as I can tell, this is a regression.

fix-message-content-overlap-bug-2-ios-compressed.mp4

[kirillzyusko]

Sorry to be picky, but I found something else

No, it's absolutely okay - thank you for careful testing! 😊

You mean this broken layout, right?

[cubuspl42]

As I understand it, the general goal is to ensure that we don't cover the element which has the user's attention with an input panel (like a keyboard or custom keyboard-alike component).

In this aspect, I find this a regression, as on main the edited message always ends up directly over the keyboard (fully visible), no matter where it was (relatively) positioned on the screen within the scroll view before the interaction.

On the feature branch, the keyboard can nearly cover the edited message. It can be worked around by manually scrolling after the fact, but I don't think it's enough.

[cubuspl42]

For reference, the behavior on main:

fix-message-content-overlap-bug-2-main-ios-compressed.mp4

Please note that, in this case, I also start to edit a message on the bottom of the screen (partially obscured by the composer), but it ends up being cleanly pushed up over the keyboard.

[roryabraham]

Will wait for a conflict-free branch before running an AdHoc build here

[kirillzyusko]

Will wait for a conflict-free branch before running an AdHoc build here

@roryabraham I resolved merge conflicts - may I kindly ask you to review these changes?

@cubuspl42 I think I fixed the problem 🤞 May I kindly ask you to check again?

[kirillzyusko]

Looks like reassure fails:

because it fails in main as well:

[cubuspl42]

Sometimes this can be waited out.

[cubuspl42]

@kirillzyusko Would you solve conflicts and merge main? Hopefully, it also resolves the "Reassure Performance Tests".

[cubuspl42]

@shubham1206agra Do you remember that you are co-assigned? This is non-trivial change, so maybe don't wait for each other, this doesn't need to be sequential 🙂

[kirillzyusko]

Would you solve conflicts and merge main? Hopefully, it also resolves the "Reassure Performance Tests".

@cubuspl42 Done 🙌

[shubham1206agra]

@kirillzyusko Can you check https://github.com/kirillzyusko/react-native-keyboard-controller/releases/tag/1.11.5 and maybe bump the version?

[shubham1206agra]

Extra space between keyboard and banner

[kirillzyusko]

Can you check https://github.com/kirillzyusko/react-native-keyboard-controller/releases/tag/1.11.5 and maybe bump the version?

@shubham1206agra done 🙌

Extra space between keyboard and banner

Can you provide a little bit more info? How did you open this screen (i. e. you tried to search for people to start a new conversation)? Would be awesome if you could add an expected result/reference how it looks now.

[shubham1206agra]

Can you provide a little bit more info? How did you open this screen (i. e. you tried to search for people to start a new conversation)? Would be awesome if you could add an expected result/reference how it looks now.

No I just opened the search page. Expected should be no gap (very less gap) at all.

[shubham1206agra]

@kirillzyusko Sorry for the confusion. Same problem exists for main. 🥶

[shubham1206agra]

Screen.Recording.2024-03-27.at.6.19.39.PM.mov

BUG: The keyboard freezes on left swipe. It is much smoother on main right now.

[shubham1206agra]

Screen.Recording.2024-03-27.at.6.31.39.PM.mov

BUG: The edit composer goes out of view on adding emojis with keyboard open. Might want to try 2-3 times to repro the issue.

[shubham1206agra]

Screen.Recording.2024-03-27.at.6.34.19.PM.mov

BUG: The edit composer goes out of view when I try to edit message twice.

[shubham1206agra]

@kirillzyusko Bump on these.

[kirillzyusko]

@shubham1206agra thank you for bumping it. I've seen bugs that you reported but didn't have a time to look into them yet (was busy with e2e tests).

Also I think it's wort to mention that starting from tomorrow I'll go to vacation, so realistically I can return to this task only after 2 weeks 😔

[hannojg]

Kiryl will be OOO until 19.04 - Expect to continue on this PR the week after returning!

[kirillzyusko]

I resolved merge conflicts, but the animation performance is really bad after new architecture get enabled. I'll investigate what causes it and will try to reproduce problems that were reported before 👍

[cubuspl42]

Some checks are failing, just saying 👇

[shubham1206agra]

@rojiphil Can you familiarise yourself with this code in the meanwhile?

[kirillzyusko]

Some checks are failing, just saying 👇

Yeah, I know, thanks ❤️

We've temporarily postponed a work on this PR, because since the new architecture was enabled - the animation on chat screen (resizing the content along with the keyboard) became unsynchronized with the keyboard (and animations are junky in this PR as well).

So the best solution would be to fix animation in a current codebase and then proceed with this PR, but we'll see how it goes 👀

[kirillzyusko]

A little bit context: I've noticed that I started to use both git merge and git rebase so decided to simplify a little bit git history and be consistent, so decided to revert last git merge and perform a git rebase (and solve all conflicts and then force push a branch).

I did it (git didn't show up any conflicts) and I pushed this branch. GitHub immediately closed the PR and showed +0/-0 changes) because branch got corrupted. With help of @shubham1206agra I restored my changes prior to final rebase, but the problem now is that GH doesn't allow to re-open this PR (even if I push new commits and there is an actual diff):

I had to open a new PR: #42143

Sorry for inconvenience 😔 If you have some ideas on how to restore this PR I'll be happy to hear 🙌