Fix parsing short mentions when sending message to backend by Kicu · Pull Request #65237 · Expensify/App

Kicu · 2025-07-01T09:24:28Z

This PR fixes a bug related to mentions, but also slightly changes the flow of parsing mentions before sending them to backend.

Explanation of Change

the root cause of the bug was described here: [Due for payment 2025-07-25] [$500] Mention disappears when including 's #50724 (comment)
the main thing I changed is that we should not process short mentions before the Parser.replace call like we used to do, because then we have 2 different ways of parsing short mentions
now the Parser.replace is called inside getParsedMessageWithShortMentions which will then traverse the resulting HTML and replace all short mentions with full mentions
the remaining changes are some renames and argument changes, since this allowed me to write unit tests

Note: there are problems with running android related to new SignInPage so I couldn't record android video. (this needs to be merged: #65178)

Fixed Issues

$ #50724
PROPOSAL:

Tests

Open any chat and start typing
type both a short mention and full long mention - verify that both get highlighted in the input
verify that mentions look correct after sending them, inside the message list
from the message popup menu choose "edit comment" and verify that mentions look good when editing
test the reproduction steps specified in: [Due for payment 2025-07-25] [$500] Mention disappears when including 's #50724

Offline tests

QA Steps

See Tests.

PR Author Checklist

Screenshots/Videos

Android: Native

Android: mWeb Chrome

iOS: Native

rec-mentions-ios.mp4

iOS: mWeb Safari

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

rec-mentions-web.mp4

MacOS: Desktop

melvin-bot · 2025-07-02T13:42:38Z

@shubham1206agra 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]

contributingGuides/MENTIONS_HIGHLIGHTING_IN_CHAT.md

src/libs/ParsingUtils.ts

jmusial · 2025-07-03T09:46:27Z

contributingGuides/MENTIONS_HIGHLIGHTING_IN_CHAT.md

+**Short mention** - is a mention containing only the login part of users email. This basically means that any phrase starting with `@` _could be considered_ a short mention. We only highlight `@mention` if it matches a login from user's personalDetails and has the same email domain.
+When parsed via ExpensiMark into html, it is described with tag `<mention-short>`.  
+Examples of short mentions:
+ - `@vit` - would only get highlighted IF my domain is `expensify.com` and there exists a user with email `john.doe@expensify.com`


May be clearer in such way:

Scenario 1:

My email: XD@expensify.com
Mentionee email: vit@expensify.com
Highlighted mention: @vit

Scenario 2:

My email: XD@expensify.com
Mentionee email: vit@test.com, there is no user vit@expensify.com
NOT Highlighted mention: @vit

Since it's hard in markdown to do nicely formatted lists - xxx with multiple lines per point I didn't include this verbatim, but edited my phrasing to be more clear

contributingGuides/MENTIONS_HIGHLIGHTING_IN_CHAT.md

tests/unit/libs/ParsingUtilsTest.ts

Kicu · 2025-07-04T06:47:41Z

@shubham1206agra ready for your review

jmusial

LGTM

shubham1206agra · 2025-07-06T12:35:49Z

src/libs/ParsingUtils.ts

+        extras: parserOptions.extras,
+    });
+
+    const textWithHandledMentions = parsedText.replace(CONST.REGEX.SHORT_MENTION_HTML, (fullMatch, group1) => {


@Kicu We need to make sure this does not get trigger inside code block. Can you please check for that?

@shubham1206agra this line runs after Parser.replace. This means the new regex runs on the code that ExpensiMark had already parsed.
So it's ExpensiMark parser that guarantees that <mention-short (or any other mention) will not appear inside code block. I have verified with @Skalakid that this can not happen.

However even if it would ever happen - then we'd fix it inside ExpensiMark. The code that runs in this line does not require any extra checks.

contributingGuides/MENTIONS_HIGHLIGHTING_IN_CHAT.md

Kicu · 2025-07-07T14:21:26Z

@shubham1206agra responded and fixed the Readme comment.

shubham1206agra · 2025-07-13T14:04:44Z

src/libs/ReportUtils.ts

+     * Currently because of the way we parse short mentions we shouldn't ever NOT escape text - it will affect what mentions get parsed
+     * This should be removed after https://github.com/Expensify/App/issues/50724 as a followup
+     */
    shouldEscapeText?: boolean;


@Kicu This might be problematic since we want to escape html tags directly present in message before parsing.

Test this message as input

`<mention-short>@lol</mention-short>`

It's get rendered as @lol instead of <mention-short>@lol</mention-short>

Sorry I'm not sure I understand.
How would this <mention-short>@lol</mention-short> appear in the input and why do we want to support the tags?

Like what you described sounds exactly correct - a user should never see the tag <mention-short> exactly the same like user will never see <mention-here>@here</mention-here> just @here.

Also later down the line we unescape the text.
I need more description from you or a more specific scenario that breaks.

discussed on slack and solved

src/libs/ReportUtils.ts

src/CONST/index.ts

shubham1206agra · 2025-07-14T13:29:47Z

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

Screen.Recording.2025-07-14.at.6.29.37.PM.mov

iOS: HybridApp

Screen.Recording.2025-07-14.at.6.54.38.PM.mov

iOS: mWeb Safari

Screen.Recording.2025-07-14.at.6.25.00.PM.mov

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

Screen.Recording.2025-07-14.at.6.12.38.PM.mov

MacOS: Desktop

Screen.Recording.2025-07-14.at.6.39.34.PM.mov

Kicu · 2025-07-15T11:13:48Z

@puneetlath please remember to review this 🙏 this is 2weeks old, I'd like to merge soon if no bugs are found

puneetlath · 2025-07-16T19:25:31Z

Good job with this! Let's keep our eye out for deploy blockers.

github-actions · 2025-07-16T20:24:28Z

🚀 Deployed to staging by https://github.com/puneetlath in version: 9.1.82-1 🚀

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

github-actions · 2025-07-18T04:44:52Z

🚀 Deployed to production by https://github.com/luacmartins in version: 9.1.82-7 🚀

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

Kicu force-pushed the kicu/50724-fix-mention-parsing branch 6 times, most recently from dab6846 to 207746e Compare July 2, 2025 12:37

Kicu changed the title ~~WIP Fix parsing short mentions when sending message to backend~~ Fix parsing short mentions when sending message to backend Jul 2, 2025

Kicu force-pushed the kicu/50724-fix-mention-parsing branch from 207746e to a19fff4 Compare July 2, 2025 13:32

Kicu marked this pull request as ready for review July 2, 2025 13:42

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Kicu added 3 commits July 4, 2025 08:45

Fix parsing short mentions when sending message to backend

4688d4e

Add mentions docs

bae5225

Update Mentions docs after review

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Kicu force-pushed the kicu/50724-fix-mention-parsing branch from 2ec75c2 to 4f95d5a Compare July 4, 2025 06:45

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Fix handling mention tags by no longer running unescapeText

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Kicu force-pushed the kicu/50724-fix-mention-parsing branch from bfb9733 to 33f879b Compare July 14, 2025 11:01

Fix tests for ParsingUtils

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Remove no longer used SHORT_MENTION regex

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puneetlath merged commit b834762 into Expensify:main Jul 16, 2025
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Deploy Checklist: New Expensify 2025-07-16 #66274

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[Due for payment 2025-07-25] [$500] Mention disappears when including 's #50724

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Deploy Checklist: New Expensify 2025-04-29 Expensify/App-Test-Fork#56

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Kicu commented Jul 1, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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