Typing certain emoji crashes the app

[borisyankov]

This happens if using Gboard - the Google Keyboard.
This is reported as being the fix:
facebook/react-native@41975f7

The commit is included in React Native 0.56

[gnprice]

Sweet -- glad this is already fixed upstream!

Looks like facebook/react-native#18405 (comment) is the RN issue report. (Followed a link from the commit message on the commit mentioned above; and the repro steps look like a perfect match.)

Though... hmm. That issue is still open.

... OK, but the linked commit (which came from facebook/react-native#18443) is supposed to be a workaround that applies if you don't pass an onKeyPress prop to your TextInput. Which we currently don't, so I guess when we upgrade to RN 0.56 that will fix the issue for us.

[gnprice]

BTW that upstream issue thread helps clarify what the conditions are that trigger the issue: it looks like it's not specific to Gboard, but it happens on Android when you use any keyboard to type... actually any character outside the Unicode BMP, i.e. a character that doesn't fit into one Java char. In practice that mostly means an emoji that isn't one of the oldest emoji.

[gnprice]

Unassigning because I believe there isn't any ongoing work to do on this issue; it should just get fixed when we upgrade RN. (Though part of doing that upgrade is we should confirm that.) Thanks again @borisyankov for writing up the issue and for the research!

I just filed #2788 to track the RN upgrade. If you want to take that, please do :)

[gnprice]

Also: thanks @adnrs96 for originally reporting this issue!

[gnprice]

And that RN upgrade has now been merged in master! 😅 Our belief when we studied this issue was that it would get fixed "for free" when we did that upgrade.

@adnrs96 , are you up for testing the app from master and checking if the issue still reproduces?

[gnprice]

... Hmm, on the one hand I should have reread the thread more closely:

BTW that upstream issue thread helps clarify what the conditions are that trigger the issue: it looks like it's not specific to Gboard, but it happens on Android when you use any keyboard to type... actually any character outside the Unicode BMP, i.e. a character that doesn't fit into one Java char. In practice that mostly means an emoji that isn't one of the oldest emoji.

So this is something any of us can easily reproduce with an Android emulator or device. 🎊 (🎊 U+1F38a CONFETTI BALL) is one handy example of an emoji that should trigger the issue.

On the other hand, I just tried that on 19.2.102 (the prod release from yesterday, for Android) on my phone, and it didn't reproduce! So there's something here we don't understand.

Maybe Android 9 fixed this? My phone is on that now; it was Android 8 (maybe 8.1) when we looked at this last, in July.

This is probably still resolved by that RN upgrade (#2789), but it'd be good to poke around at least a little more to confirm we still know some way to reproduce the issue before that putative fix. We're not aware of anything in 19.2.192, relative to a few months ago when this was reported, that would have fixed it.

[gnprice]

Aha, @borisyankov just remembered the repro more precisely 🎊 , and we successfully repro'd on 19.2.102 on my phone (Android 9):

• In the stock keyboard, start typing a word that names an emoji.
• Don't use the emoji UI of the keyboard -- just type letters, like confetti.
• When the autocomplete suggestions offer an emoji (:confetti_ball:), choose that.
• The app crashes.

[gnprice]

And indeed this is fixed in master! 👏 (U+1F44F CLAPPING HANDS SIGN) Presumably by the RN v0.57 upgrade from #2789.

Thanks again @adnrs96 for reporting this issue!