[$500] Request money - The transition between tabs is not smooth after changing the merchant

[lanitochka17]

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Version Number: 1.3.98-0
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:

Issue found when executing PR #30420

Action Performed:

1. Go to URL https://staging.new.expensify.com/
2. Login with any account
3. Go to FAB button -> Request
4. Enter an amount -> Choose an user
5. Click Show More -> Merchant -> Enter the new data -> Save

Expected Result:

The transition between tabs is smooth

Actual Result:

The transition between tabs is not smooth

Workaround:

Unknown

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

Bug6271549_1699637835916.Recording__6715.mp4

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• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0122f38a619454be7f
• Upwork Job ID: 1723037447965073408
• Last Price Increase: 2023-12-01

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0122f38a619454be7f

[melvin-bot]

Bug0 Triage Checklist (Main S/O)

• This "bug" occurs on a supported platform (ensure Platforms in OP are ✅)
• This bug is not a duplicate report (check E/App issues and #expensify-bugs)
  • If it is, comment with a link to the original report, close the issue and add any novel details to the original issue instead
• This bug is reproducible using the reproduction steps in the OP. S/O
  • If the reproduction steps are clear and you're unable to reproduce the bug, check with the reporter and QA first, then close the issue.
  • If the reproduction steps aren't clear and you determine the correct steps, please update the OP.
• This issue is filled out as thoroughly and clearly as possible
  • Pay special attention to the title, results, platforms where the bug occurs, and if the bug happens on staging/production.
• I have reviewed and subscribed to the linked Slack conversation to ensure Slack/Github stay in sync

[melvin-bot]

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

[AmjedNazzal]

I don't understand this one, So the transition is not smooth when changing merchant, it seem not smooth for me when changing description or anything else as well, probably because changing these results in onyx merge which would cause a bit of lag.

[beodw]

Proposal

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

The navigation after saving the merchant page form is not smooth when creating a new manual money request.

What is the root cause of that problem?

The problem is caused by having to set the new merchant name in onyx using onyx.merge which takes a few milliseconds to set the data and so the animation after the form is saved is interrupted. The updateMerchant calls navigateBack without waiting for the state update to finish.

function updateMerchant(value) { IOU.setMoneyRequestMerchant(value.moneyRequestMerchant); navigateBack(); }

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

We can instead pass the navigate back method to the action that sets the onyx state and wait for the data to be merged. This can be done by adding a .then clause to the onyx merge call to invoke the navigate back function as a call back. Since setting the onyx state happens quickly , in milliseconds, the user will not see any delay before the navigation starts. The code can be modified to remove the navigateBack call as follows.

function updateMerchant(value) { IOU.setMoneyRequestMerchant(value.moneyRequestMerchant, navigateBack); }

And the action that updates onyx can take this as a callback and start the navigation after the state update is complete.

function setMoneyRequestMerchant(merchant, callback) { Onyx.merge(ONYXKEYS.IOU, {merchant: merchant.trim()}) .then((v) => callback()); }

You can see a video of the functionality with the fix implemented below.

Screen.Recording.2023-11-11.at.2.03.26.PM.mov

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

Alternatively, we could try subscribing to an event for when onyx is done updating its state but this would require an update to its low level pub/sub library so subscribers are notified.

[melvin-bot]

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[beodw]

Contributor details
Your Expensify account email: [email protected]
Upwork Profile Link: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01e23e52119b3f90d6

[melvin-bot]

✅ Contributor details stored successfully. Thank you for contributing to Expensify!

[melvin-bot]

@sonialiap, @fedirjh Whoops! This issue is 2 days overdue. Let's get this updated quick!

[sonialiap]

@fedirjh a new proposal, what do you think?

[melvin-bot]

📣 It's been a week! Do we have any satisfactory proposals yet? Do we need to adjust the bounty for this issue? 💸

[fedirjh]

Checking now

[fedirjh]

I was not able to reproduce the issue with a normal account on staging:

CleanShot.2023-11-20.at.13.27.37.mp4

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@beodw The issue was replicated with A High Traffic Account with 6X CPU slowdown. I was able to replicate with all the fields within the money request flow (amount, description, date).

CleanShot.2023-11-20.at.13.43.34.mp4

@beodw Could you provide further clarification on the root cause? It is unclear to me why Onyx.merge is slow, it could be something else that is causing the issue.

[sonialiap]

I've shared this issue with the Margelo team to see if they're able to pick it up
https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C035J5C9FAP/p1701695631155929

[sonialiap]

Taras from Margelo said they can take a look after they finish their current tasks. I've asked today for an ETA so that we can keep melvin peaceful

[melvin-bot]

@sonialiap @fedirjh this issue is now 4 weeks old and preventing us from maintaining WAQ, can you:

• Decide whether any proposals currently meet our guidelines and can be approved as-is today
• If no proposals meet that standard, please take this issue internal and treat it as one of your highest priorities
• If you have any questions, don't hesitate to start a discussion in #expensify-open-source

Thanks!

[melvin-bot]

Current assignee @fedirjh is eligible for the Internal assigner, not assigning anyone new.

[melvin-bot]

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

[sonialiap]

Bumped them again

[sonialiap]

We can possibly have them take a look at this next week

[sonialiap]

The delay is minimal but I can still reproduce it. Bumping margelo

[chrispader]

Hey everyone i'm Chris from Margelo :)

Outcomes from my investigation

Just looked into this issue and i'm (only) able to reproduce it with a high-traffic account with 6x CPU throttling as suggested before, though the high-traffic doesn't seem to make any difference.

I agree with what was said before, that this is mainly caused due to a Onyx.merge (or really any big onyx operation) happening at the same time as the navigation. Both are triggered simultaneously and then the JS engine schedules the work somehow, so that it causes the navigation to lag...

I noticed this also during my work on the theme switching project, where the UI lags (on web) when you change the theme in the preferences. Imo, this is a somewhat expected effect on web-based platforms with just the JS thread doing all the work.

Possible solution

You experience this problem in many cases where we navigate at the same time as storing something to Onyx. Especially when throttling the CPU (like 6x in this case) this occurs to me on basically any other page in the settings.

Therefore i think the scope of this is way bigger than just this single flow.

As suggested before, the most straightforward solution to fix this is to just delay the navigation until after the data has been stored to Onyx.

[dylanexpensify]

Hmm, I couldn't reproduce. I vote close

[sonialiap]

I'm still seeing a delay, but it's not as bad in my account as in Fedi's comment #31193 (comment). Most of our ND users probably won't become high-traffic accounts so I we probably won't hear about this from them any time soon. If this is a wider behavior as suspected by Chris, then it will likely crop up in a flow that's used more than updating a merchant name and will become a higher priority for being fixed. I'm going to close this issue for now since it sounds like it requires a larger update then it's worth atm