Populate chats from message center

[roryabraham]

Problem

NewDot mobile is prone to "ghost chats". They happen when:

1. Your phone is locked and in your pocket and you have a network connection.
2. You receive a push notification.
3. (At this point, what ideally happens is that the app is woken in the background, the push notification is processed and saved in Onyx. All that code is implemented and in-place, but it's stringently regulated by the OS and dependent upon variables outside of our control, such as the battery level of the device. So we can't guarantee that it will always happen.)
4. Because of things outside our control, the notification is not saved in Onyx.
5. You lose your network connection for one reason or another.
6. You then read the push notification message, and tap on the notification.
7. The app opens the chat, but the message you just read is nowhere to be found. Because we don't have a network connection we can't load the missing chats over the network.

Solution

Disclaimer: I don't know if this is actually possible, but it's worth looking into. That's why I'm creating this issue...

When opening the app, read any new notifications in the "message center". Use the payloads of those notifications to populate the chats you received, without needing a network connection.

[roryabraham]

cc @Julesssss @AndrewGable – I don't know when I'll have time to look into this, but I think it's a good idea and might be a way to fix the "ghost messages" issue

[roryabraham]

This is internal because push notifications can't be tested by external contributors

[Julesssss]

I can't speak for iOS here, but if a user opens the Android app by tapping a notification we can retrieve the app data from the Intent bundle. It seems that accessing the NotificationManagerService at app-open to read all notifications is NOT possible.

This doesn't solve for all cases, because the notification will only contain data for that specific chat. UNLESS we start sending all unread message data as part of the notification. Slightly hacky and maybe we'll eventually hit the 4kb limit, but this handles most cases.

[roryabraham]

Haven't had time to investigate this yet. If anyone wants to help out with this feel free to self-assign and we can collaborate on it. If it's viable I think this could be a game-changer for the mobile apps.

[Julesssss]

No updates, remains low priority.

[Julesssss]

Hey @sketchydroide, do you know if it is possible to read all notifications from NotificationCenter in iOS? The only thing I could find was this hack from a 10 year old StackOverflow post.

It's not possible on Android, we can only access the notification intent & bundle if the user taps the notification.

[sketchydroide]

I don't think so, but not 100% sure, notifications should be read if you are listening to them

[Julesssss]

notifications should be read if you are listening to them

Does this listener require that the app is open and|or in the foreground?

[sketchydroide]

for push notifications no, iOS will open the app if necessary, or the push is open, if the app is in background it can still process notifications

[Julesssss]

Held on the P/S

[roryabraham]

High-level design doc in review

[roryabraham]

Got tied up with deploy fires and improvements

[roryabraham]

Posted about this in slack: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C04E99DVBTP/p1688080702244769

[roryabraham]

Was OOO most of last week, I anticipate progress on this closer to the end of the week

[roryabraham]

No update yet this week, but this has been in the back of my mind. Just spread a little thin at the moment.

[roryabraham]

No update 😞

[roryabraham]

Same

[melvin-bot]

This issue has not been updated in over 15 days. @roryabraham eroding to Monthly issue.

P.S. Is everyone reading this sure this is really a near-term priority? Be brave: if you disagree, go ahead and close it out. If someone disagrees, they'll reopen it, and if they don't: one less thing to do!

[roryabraham]

No update

[roryabraham]

No update

[roryabraham]

Going to close this as it's not clear that it will be necessary in a world with #reliable-updates