[$500] Compose -Copy URL to clipboard shows url link and markdown text.

[izarutskaya]

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---

Version Number: 1.4.0-0
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:

1. Go to https://staging.new.expensify.com
2. Open any report
3. Paste *text https://expensify.com#abc*
4. Send the message
5. Observe that * bolding doesn't work.

Expected Result:

Link should be bolded

Actual Result:

Link is not bolded, markdown * are showing

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

Bug6278535_1700104850573.star.mp4

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[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~01b6ad7e1bea3c914c

[melvin-bot]

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

[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 - @ntdiary (External)

[s-alves10]

@izarutskaya

Will you let me know what the original text is?

[tienifr]

Proposal

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

Paste URL with hash inside bold markdown does not apply the bold markdown

*text https://expensify.com#abc*

What is the root cause of that problem?

Our bold rule is currently after the auto link rule, so at the time bold rule is processed, the auto link already assumes the * as belonging to its hash, thus the auto link does not apply.

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

1. Move the bold rule above the auto link rule
2. Modify the auto link (and possibly auto email) rule so that it allows auto linking inside bold tags. (The sam approach is already done for the autoemail, see the ?!em part here

The current auto link regex is here

We need to update the <\\/) part to <\\/(?!strong|em>)) so that it allows auto link inside strong and em tag

Same for auto email here, update ?!em to ?!em|strong
3. Fix the block quote rule so it works with the new bold order

We can fix the same for other tags like italic (move above bold tag), strikethrough, ...

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

Modify the auto link rule to not consume the bold/italic character if it's entirely inside the special character pairs for bold, italic, ...
In here, we can add ([^_*~]*?) after ([_*~]*?) to match additional characters after the first * and modify modifyTextForUrlLinks to append the text properly.

[tienifr]

Will you let me know what the original text is?

@s-alves10 please try with this text *text https://expensify.com#abc*

[melvin-bot]

@ntdiary, @peterdbarkerUK Eep! 4 days overdue now. Issues have feelings too...

[peterdbarkerUK]

repro'd and updated OP

[css1022]

Proposal

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

URL with hash inside bold markdown does not apply the bold markdown

*text https://expensify.com#abc*

What is the root cause of that problem?

The bold rule is after the auto link rule,
The auto link markdown parses url with ending * before bold rule is applied, thus the bold rule does not apply.

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

If Url with ending asterisk is part of string which is likely to be parsed as bold (e.g. *text https://expensify.com#abc*),
we should not contain ending * as part of url.
To do that, we can add following process in modifyTextForUrlLinks function.
The process is to exclude ending asterisk if there is string with asterisk leading to url .

                if (numberOfCharsToRemove) {
                    match[0] = match[0].substring(0, match[0].length - numberOfCharsToRemove);
                    url = url.substring(0, url.length - numberOfCharsToRemove);
                }
            }
--------->
            if (match.index !== 0) {
                const stringBeforeUrl = textToCheck.substring(startIndex, match.index);
                const lastChar = url.charAt(url.length - 1);
                if (lastChar === '*' && stringBeforeUrl.includes(lastChar)) {
                    match[0] = match[0].substring(0, match[0].length - 1);
                    url = url.substring(0, url.length - 1);
                }
            }
<-----------
            replacedText = replacedText.concat(textToCheck.substr(startIndex, (match.index - startIndex)));

we can add relevant test case

This approach does not make other test cases failed.

[melvin-bot]

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[melvin-bot]

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

[peterdbarkerUK]

@css1022 Could you follow the instructions here? Thank you!

[0xmiros]

This seems like dupe of #30823

[melvin-bot]

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

[peterdbarkerUK]

I would agree it seems to be the same root cause of where * fits int he regex pattern. @r3770 could you clarify why you disagree?

[ntdiary]

Alright, it actually looks like the PR for #30823 is merged (not deployed, because it seems like the repo doesn't have a deploy process).

So this is off hold now.

@ntdiary what's the next step now this is off hold? Re-test the reproduction steps?

@conorpendergrast, eh, that PR has been deployed to the production, but it didn't resolve this issue. BTW, here's the structure of the URL:

So far, we allow the * character in both the Parameters and Anchor parts, and I have just tested it again, and it seems the rule is consistent with Slack app. So, personally, I don't have strong feeling about fixing this issue (it's okay to just close this issue).

However, if we still want to fix this issue eventually, we can continue to wait for some new proposals, because the above proposals don't seem to be very perfect. :)

[conorpendergrast]

Fantastic, thanks for that @ntdiary - I'm coming to this late, so that's really helpful. I'll take another pass through, reproduce it too, and then will recommend fixing or closing.

[conorpendergrast]

Ok, I've reproduced this again too.

So, personally, I don't have strong feeling about fixing this issue (it's okay to just close this issue).

Thinking with my customer support hat on, I think I can imagine myself sending a message like:

*Please go to https://help.expensify.com/articles/expensify-classic/bank-accounts-and-credit-cards/business-bank-accounts/Business-Bank-Accounts-AUD#bank-specific-batch-payment-support*

which doesn't work:

Whereas the workaround is:

*Please go to* *[https://help.expensify.com/articles/expensify-classic/bank-accounts-and-credit-cards/business-bank-accounts/Business-Bank-Accounts-AUD#bank-specific-batch-payment-support](https://help.expensify.com/articles/expensify-classic/bank-accounts-and-credit-cards/business-bank-accounts/Business-Bank-Accounts-AUD#bank-specific-batch-payment-support)*

Which does work:

[conorpendergrast]

I've posted to #expensify-open-source in Slack to get discussion on closing this out

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

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

[sakluger]

Hi @ntdiary, I'd like to fix this issue, and I think that Conor's proposed fix in his comment here is a good solution.

[ntdiary]

Hi @ntdiary, I'd like to fix this issue, and I think that Conor's proposed fix in his comment here is a good solution.

@sakluger, are you referring to this workaround?

*Please go to* *[https://help.expensify.com/articles/expensify-classic/bank-accounts-and-credit-cards/business-bank-accounts/Business-Bank-Accounts-AUD#bank-specific-batch-payment-support](https://help.expensify.com/articles/expensify-classic/bank-accounts-and-credit-cards/business-bank-accounts/Business-Bank-Accounts-AUD#bank-specific-batch-payment-support)*

Our app already supports this workaround, but our customers need to use the standard markdown link format, which is [title](link).

If we want to use both autolink and bold format (i.e., *go to google.com#abc*), we need to improve our autolink regexp pattern.

[melvin-bot]

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

[melvin-bot]

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

[sakluger]

Hi @ntdiary - I misunderstood Conor's comment before, sorry about that! I thought his "workaround" was a proposed solution when it's actually what the user would have to do to make the whole text line bold.

I did a bit more research and found that it's possible for URLs to have *'s. For that reason, I think we should leave the current edge-case bug as is.

In the future, after we add live markdown previews, we'll also add keyboard shortcuts (i.e. Command+b) at some point, which will make this less of an issue.