Reaction emoji search / Sending freeform reactions

[frebib]

Adds a search field to the reaction emoji picker, and also allows sending freeform reactions.

Type of change

• Feature
• Bugfix
• Technical
• Other :

Content

Motivation and context

#1611

This is a pretty opinionated patch, and is likely not in a mergeable state. It's mostly provided as a proof-of-concept/starting point. I've been using this for a few months now and I cannot live without it.

Notable bugs in this implementation are the bottom sheet stalling briefly when the keyboard opens. There is an open bug ticket https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/323792322 and no resolution yet. This happens because the ModalBottomSheet has imePadding() unconditionally applied. A fix would be to use a different bottom sheet implementation without that.

Screenshots / GIFs

Coming soon

Tests

😰

Tested devices

• Physical
• Emulator
• OS version(s):

Checklist

• Changes have been tested on an Android device or Android emulator with API 23
• UI change has been tested on both light and dark themes
• Accessibility has been taken into account. See https://github.com/element-hq/element-x-android/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md#accessibility
• Pull request is based on the develop branch
• Pull request includes a new file under ./changelog.d. See https://github.com/element-hq/element-x-android/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md#changelog
• Pull request includes screenshots or videos if containing UI changes
• Pull request includes a sign off
• You've made a self review of your PR

[github-actions]

Thank you for your contribution! Here are a few things to check in the PR to ensure it's reviewed as quickly as possible:

• Your branch should be based on origin/develop, at least when it was created.
• There is a changelog entry in the changelog.d folder with the Towncrier format.
• The test pass locally running ./gradlew test.
• The code quality check suite pass locally running ./gradlew runQualityChecks.
• If you modified anything related to the UI, including previews, you'll have to run the Record screenshots GH action in your forked repo: that will generate compatible new screenshots. However, given Github Actions limitations, it will prevent the CI from running temporarily, until you upload a new commit after that one. To do so, just pull the latest changes and push an empty commit.

[jmartinesp]

FWIW I am personally very happy to see this since I was working on a simplified version of this on my spare time, just to know how difficult it'd be to implement (the answer being:, the logic is quite easy, the UX not so much). However, since this is a change in design and it'll need to be added on iOS too we need to get it through the product & design team first. Could you upload some screenshots of what the emoji picker looks like with these changes?

Also, for new changes that include changing UI it would be nice to have some issue with a proposal first so we can validate the approach so contributors don't waste their time on PRs that won't be merged or re-writing some screen or logic again and again.

[jmartinesp]

A fix would be to use a different bottom sheet implementation without that.

About this: we're using our own fork of the non-modal bottom sheet component for the RTE in text formatting mode because we found lots of issues with focus and scrolling that hadn't been fixed in months. We're not looking forward to forking yet another component, but it's something we could do, if necessary.

[amshakal]

This looks good to me and matches well with our design language. Thank you for your contribution!

[CLAassistant]

Thank you for your submission! We really appreciate it. Like many open source projects, we ask that you all sign our Contributor License Agreement before we can accept your contribution.
0 out of 2 committers have signed the CLA.

❌ ChelseaDH
❌ frebib
_{You have signed the CLA already but the status is still pending? Let us recheck it.}

[Aranjedeath]

I would love to see this added to Element X, and I think I only see a sign-off missing. Can we get that done? Thank you so much for contributing this, it is a major user-facing pain point with Element X :)

[jmartinesp]

This is still an issue for the search part: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/324934884

In fact, the first report was added in some other issue almost a year ago (we can have an anniversary party!).

[spaetz]

This is still an issue for the search part: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/324934884

In fact, the first report was added in some other issue almost a year ago (we can have an anniversary party!).

Just to highlight: the linked Google issue was marked fixed on Nov 13.

[bmarty]

Hello, I am doing some cleanup on our stale PRs and it could be nice if this one got updated.

I had a very quick look on the code, and it seems reasonable. A proper PR review will still be needed.

An important note: we want to keep feature parity with the Element X iOS application, so every feature that is visible to the users should be identical. If this is not the case (I am thinking about the ability to search for Emoji for instance - but I have not checked if iOS have it), the feature must be hidden behind a disabled feature flag until Element X iOS has it. This is the case for instance for completion on room alias (feature flag is FeatureFlags.RoomAliasSuggestions). For things that are not visible to the users, like the change in the API to send a free-form reaction for instance, no feature flag is required.

Is it possible to update this PR taking into account this ^ @frebib ?

Thank you very much for your help!

[jmartinesp]

To be fair, the fix for main blocker (bottomsheet jumping around when opening/closing the keyboard) hasn't been released in a stable M3 library version. It's in the beta version, so it's supposed to be merged soon™.

[bmarty]

Closing the PR.