Make search bars work with spaces by roryabraham · Pull Request #61746 · Expensify/App

roryabraham · 2025-05-08T23:12:34Z

Explanation of Change

Sometimes strings from the back-end seem to include non-breaking spaces or other invisible characters. We could also see weird results with diacritics and such.

So this PR updates all usages of useSearchResults to normalize both the search values and the search term before checking for a match.

Fixed Issues

$ #61650

Tests

Precondition:

Have a workspace with at least 16 members.
At least one member has first and last name.

Go to staging.new.expensify.com
Go to workspace settings > Members.
Search for the member with first and last name using the full name. Verify that the member appears in the search.

Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

Offline tests

same as tests

QA Steps

Same as tests.

Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

PR Author Checklist

Screenshots/Videos

Android: Native

Android: mWeb Chrome

iOS: Native

iOS: mWeb Safari

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

web.mov

MacOS: Desktop

yuwenmemon · 2025-05-08T23:19:54Z

src/libs/StringUtils.ts

+ * - collapsing whitespaces
+ * - trimming
+ */
+function normalize(text: string): string {


Can this reuse some of the other normalize functions? Like for diacritics?

It does reuse sanitizeString and removeInvisibleCharacters.

I agree there's kind of a lot of overlap here that should probably be cleaned up at some point. Don't really want to do it in the scope of a deploy blocker fix though. I feel like long-term we'll want a really fast fuzzy matcher that handles normalization internally.

Curious why sanitizeString is being used, as it caused a bug #61752

melvin-bot · 2025-05-08T23:23:09Z

@rayane-d Please copy/paste the Reviewer Checklist from here into a new comment on this PR and complete it. If you have the K2 extension, you can simply click: [this button]

yuwenmemon · 2025-05-08T23:31:34Z

Reviewer Checklist

I have verified the author checklist is complete (all boxes are checked off).
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Screenshots/Videos

Android: HybridApp

Android: mWeb Chrome

iOS: HybridApp

iOS: mWeb Safari

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

MacOS: Desktop

Make search bars work with spaces (cherry picked from commit 23aa17c) (cherry-picked to staging by roryabraham)

OSBotify · 2025-05-08T23:44:32Z

✋ This PR was not deployed to staging yet because QA is ongoing. It will be automatically deployed to staging after the next production release.

github-actions · 2025-05-09T00:20:56Z

🚀 Cherry-picked to staging by https://github.com/roryabraham in version: 9.1.43-3 🚀

platform	result
🖥 desktop 🖥	success ✅
🕸 web 🕸	success ✅
🤖 android 🤖	success ✅
🍎 iOS 🍎	success ✅

@Expensify/applauseleads please QA this PR and check it off on the deploy checklist if it passes.

github-actions · 2025-05-09T09:28:38Z

🚀 Cherry-picked to staging by https://github.com/roryabraham in version: 9.1.43-5 🚀

platform	result
🖥 desktop 🖥	success ✅
🕸 web 🕸	success ✅
🤖 android 🤖	success ✅
🍎 iOS 🍎	failure ❌

@Expensify/applauseleads please QA this PR and check it off on the deploy checklist if it passes.

github-actions · 2025-05-13T17:54:21Z

🚀 Deployed to production by https://github.com/francoisl in version: 9.1.44-8 🚀

platform	result
🖥 desktop 🖥	success ✅
🕸 web 🕸	success ✅
🤖 android 🤖	failure ❌
🍎 iOS 🍎	success ✅

dukenv0307 · 2025-10-23T08:59:23Z

src/pages/workspace/categories/WorkspaceCategoriesPage.tsx


    const filterCategory = useCallback((categoryOption: PolicyOption, searchInput: string) => {
-        return !!categoryOption.text?.toLowerCase().includes(searchInput) || !!categoryOption.alternateText?.toLowerCase().includes(searchInput);
+        const categoryText = StringUtils.normalize(categoryOption.text?.toLowerCase() ?? '');


Coming from #72615, we should use tokenizedSearch here for better matching result

roryabraham added 2 commits May 8, 2025 15:52

Fix spaces not working in search bar on members page

f889e70

Implement the same fix for all other usages of useSearchResults

7ce595a

roryabraham self-assigned this May 8, 2025

roryabraham mentioned this pull request May 8, 2025

[Due for payment 2025-05-22] [Due for payment 2025-05-20] Workspace - Searching for member using full name returns no result #61650

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roryabraham requested a review from yuwenmemon May 8, 2025 23:17

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61d0bdb

yuwenmemon reviewed May 8, 2025

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roryabraham marked this pull request as ready for review May 8, 2025 23:23

roryabraham requested a review from a team as a code owner May 8, 2025 23:23

melvin-bot bot requested review from rayane-d and removed request for a team May 8, 2025 23:23

yuwenmemon approved these changes May 8, 2025

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yuwenmemon merged commit 23aa17c into main May 8, 2025
21 of 23 checks passed

yuwenmemon deleted the Rory-FixSearchBarRegressions branch May 8, 2025 23:34

OSBotify pushed a commit that referenced this pull request May 8, 2025

Merge pull request #61746 from Expensify/Rory-FixSearchBarRegressions

84c42cf

Make search bars work with spaces (cherry picked from commit 23aa17c) (cherry-picked to staging by roryabraham)

OSBotify added the CP Staging marks PRs that have been CP'd to staging label May 8, 2025

github-actions bot mentioned this pull request May 8, 2025

Deploy Checklist: New Expensify 2025-05-07 #61626

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90 tasks

mitarachim mentioned this pull request May 9, 2025

[Due for payment 2025-05-22] Workspace - Unable to search for a member using the number #61752

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mountiny mentioned this pull request May 14, 2025

Deploy Checklist: New Expensify 2025-05-13 #61917

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dukenv0307 reviewed Oct 23, 2025

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Make search bars work with spaces#61746

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