React component not forwarding all activities to the activityMiddleware

[DavidBurela]

The React component seems to only forward activities that are typing or message to the activityMiddleware. This means I can't write client side code to react to bot events.

Using bot v4, if I send an activity like this

await step.context.sendActivities([
    { type: 'typing' },
    { type: 'event' },
    { type: 'event', value: "my event args" },
    { type: 'customEvent' },
    { type: 'customEvent', value: "cool stuff" },
    { type: 'message', text: 'My message' }
    ]);

and in the client side, I hook in an activityMiddleware

activityMiddleware = () => next => card => {
    console.log(card.activity.type);
};

render() {
    return (
        <ReactWebChat activityMiddleware={this.activityMiddleware} directLine={this.directLine} userID="xxxx" />
    );
}

when I check the browser console, only the typing and message activities are sent through to the middleware. No other activities show up.

[corinagum]

Thanks for reporting this issue -- I am able to repro, and this will need to be fixed.

Notes to fixer:
createCoreMiddleware.js on line 28 simply returns the next activity if it's not of type message or typing. @cwhitten @compulim Do we want Web Chat to display anything when special activities are sent? Or can we just make sure that the middleware passes all activities on and leave it at that?

[compulim]

createCoreMiddleware.js:28 is saying to use next middleware when they are not message or typing.

In BasicTranscript.js:30, we are filtering what to show on the screen. We need to change the filter, there are multiple ways to do that (i.e. need discussion):

• Un-filter everything in BasicTranscript.js:30
  • Then, use createCoreMiddleware.js to filter out postBack, event, and other activities that was originally filtered
• Un-filter only certain types of activities, for example, un-filter event activity
  • Use createCoreMiddleware.js to filter them out again

Personally, I lean toward un-filtering all

Either case, we also need to modify shouldShowTimestamp(), because it is relying on shouldShowActivity() right now. If we move the filter to middleware, it might broke timestamp grouping.

We might be able to fix timestamp grouping by looking at the last outcome of middleware (return false means it is hidden), so we can kind of redo the logic without shouldShowTimestamp.

[cwhitten]

I agree that WebChat should have as little of opinion as reasonable on what activities get filtered.