[WIP] 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
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• 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]

[shubham1206agra]

Tagging @rojiphil here.

[kirillzyusko]

Just a quick update - after enabling new architecture I see very low FPS for animation:

Simulator.Screen.Recording.-.iPhone.15.Pro.-.2024-05-14.at.18.11.00.mp4

Currently trying to understand why it works so slow and what needs to be changed to speed it up 👀

Also found a crash and fixed it in kirillzyusko/react-native-keyboard-controller#444

Keep working on this PR 💪

[kirillzyusko]

I continue to work on this problem. Still investigating why we observe performance drop - the problem is that even if we don't change layout of list/footer etc. and run a simple animation of red square (via translateY property), then it's still laggy 🤯

Screen.Recording.2024-06-06.at.13.02.07.mov

I think this investigation will take more time, than I initially expected.

[roryabraham]

@kirillzyusko I'm going to mark this as WIP, feel free to remove the prefix when you feel it's ready for further reviews

[perunt]

@mountiny, may I ask you to trigger the build here? I want more people to test iOS.
It works mostly smoothly, but for low-end devices, it sometimes drops the frames. I want to get more test data on this. Thanks in advance!

[github-actions]

🧪🧪 Use the links below to test this adhoc build on Android, iOS, Desktop, and Web. Happy testing! 🧪🧪

Android 🤖	iOS 🍎
https://ad-hoc-expensify-cash.s3.amazonaws.com/android/42143/index.html	https://ad-hoc-expensify-cash.s3.amazonaws.com/ios/42143/index.html
Desktop 💻	Web 🕸️
https://ad-hoc-expensify-cash.s3.amazonaws.com/desktop/42143/NewExpensify.dmg	https://42143.pr-testing.expensify.com

---

👀 View the workflow run that generated this build 👀

[perunt]

@Santhosh-Sellavel, could you give it a try and test the iOS part?

[shubham1206agra]

@perunt The reviewers of this PR will be me and @rojiphil actually

[perunt]

Got it, then can you try it?

[shubham1206agra]

@perunt Can you merge main first?

[perunt]

Sure (I'm not asking for a full code review though, don't wanna confuse you 😃 ) I need to know how it works on other devices, as I have a limited number of iOS devices

[perunt]

@shubham1206agra @rojiphil any luck here?

[shubham1206agra]

Screen.Recording.2024-09-23.at.6.28.59.PM.mov

BUG: The content goes out of screen for a second

[shubham1206agra]

Screen.Recording.2024-09-23.at.6.30.02.PM.mov

Choppy frames when going back from private notes page

[shubham1206agra]

Screen.Recording.2024-09-23.at.6.31.18.PM.mov

BUG: Padding gets shown momentarily when going back from report

[shubham1206agra]

Screen.Recording.2024-09-23.at.6.34.19.PM.mov

BUG: Opening Emoji Picker gives weird behavior

[shubham1206agra]

Screen.Recording.2024-09-23.at.6.35.54.PM.mov

BUG: Some extra padding gets shown when opening Select workspace page

[shubham1206agra]

@perunt Is there a reason why going back from page which requires keyboard is slow?

[mallenexpensify]

@perunt The reviewers of this PR will be me and @rojiphil actually

@shubham1206agra and @rojiphil , do you both need to be assigned to the linked issue as C+ to get paid for review work here?