[$250] Mention disappears when including `'s`

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number: 9.0.48-0 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: @flodnv Slack conversation: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C049HHMV9SM/p1728591305161159

Action Performed:

1. Type something @user in a room (the mention must be the short version without the email part)
2. This inserts something @user with a trailing space
3. Remove the trailing space with the backspace key, add a 's

   Expected Result:

   The @mentioned user is highlighted in the sent message as something @user's

   Actual Result:

   The @user part is not marked as a mention and message is sent as plain text

   Workaround:

   Unknown

   Platforms:

   Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

   • [ ] Android: Native
   • [ ] Android: mWeb Chrome
   • [ ] iOS: Native
   • [ ] iOS: mWeb Safari
   • [x] MacOS: Chrome / Safari
   • [ ] MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a76f0845-7388-4e7b-8ffe-0318f6d85ebc

Add any screenshot/video evidence

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Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @shubham1206agra

[melvin-bot[bot]]

Triggered auto assignment to @mallenexpensify (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details. Please add this bug to a GH project, as outlined in the SO.

[melvin-bot[bot]]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021845828693936391795

[melvin-bot[bot]]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @shubham1206agra (External)

[bernhardoj]

Edited by proposal-police: This proposal was edited at 2024-10-14 14:27:47 UTC.

Proposal

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

Mention doesn't work when the mention has '.

What is the root cause of that problem?

Looks like this only happens on short mentions. When we do a complete mention, for example, @bernhard.josephus@gmail.com's, only @bernhard.josephus@gmail.com is matched as the mention, and 's is treated as a normal text.

But when we do short mentions, for example, @bernhard.josephus's, all text is matched as a mention. That's because the regex accepts '. https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/0bb5806d60a69303b6d37ebde4d23450714c2ce2/src/CONST.ts#L2754

Based on this SO, ' is a valid character for an email before the @ character.

And because there is no contact with an email that contains ', the full mention can't be built. https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/0bb5806d60a69303b6d37ebde4d23450714c2ce2/src/libs/ReportUtils.ts#L4176-L4178

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

If we don't want to accept ' as part of the short mention, then we can remove it from the regex. https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/0bb5806d60a69303b6d37ebde4d23450714c2ce2/src/CONST.ts#L2754

[flodnv]

What if the short mention has an ' in it?

[mallenexpensify]

Was able to reproduce, i wonder if this is a bug or new feature. Meaning... was this ever discussed before, where we decide NOT to tag a user with 's at the end of their handle. (guessing not, just seems like it's worked this way from the start)

[bernhardoj]

@flodnv if the email has ' in it, then it won't be converted to a mention. The user needs to type the full mention. But I just tested that our full user mention regex can't match either if there is ' in it.

[shoibsq]

Proposal

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

Mention is not working with possessive forms like 's

What is the root cause of that problem?

Regex is not handling Possessive forms

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

Updating Regex to handle Apostrophes, Email Mentions, and Possessives.

SHORT_MENTION: new RegExp(`@[\\w\\-\\+#']+(?:\\.[\\w\\-\\+#']+)*(?:@[\\w\\-]+\\.[a-z]{2,})?(?![^\`]*\`)(?=\\b|'s)`, 'gim'),

Details on updating regex :

1. Handling Apostrophes in Mentions: @[\w\-\+#']+ allows apostrophes (') inside mentions.
2. Handling Dot-separated Parts: (?:\.[\w\-\+#']+)* matches additional parts like @user.name.
3. Handling Email Mentions: (?:@[\w\-]+\.[a-z]{2,})? allows optional email-style mentions like @bernha'ard.josephus@gmail.com.
4. Handling Word Boundary and Possessive 's: The lookahead (?=\b|'s) ensures that mentions are valid when followed by a word boundary (space or punctuation) or possessive 's.

[melvin-bot[bot]]

@mallenexpensify, @shubham1206agra Uh oh! This issue is overdue by 2 days. Don't forget to update your issues!

[shubham1206agra]

@mallenexpensify I don't think we can omit ' from the short mention check. We must find another solution to this problem since slack has no problem handling it.

[bernhardoj]

Does Slack have a short mention?

[melvin-bot[bot]]

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

[mallenexpensify]

I'm uncertain of the Slack's logic or exactly how they handle it, check the vid below

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7f911179-ff79-4bd3-bcca-f3835fe8443a

[melvin-bot[bot]]

@mallenexpensify, @shubham1206agra Whoops! This issue is 2 days overdue. Let's get this updated quick!

[melvin-bot[bot]]

@mallenexpensify, @shubham1206agra Eep! 4 days overdue now. Issues have feelings too...