[Due for payment 2025-08-05] [Awaiting Checklist] [Due for payment 2025-07-28] [$250] Text input field - Unable to paste text with `CMD + v`

[izarutskaya]

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Version Number: v9.1.60-3
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: @carlosmiceli
Slack conversation (hyperlinked to channel name): #expensify_quality

Action Performed:

1. Go to https://staging.new.expensify.com/
2. Log in > any chat
3. Go to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79630900/split-all-columns-in-half-by-character-position and copy using CMD + C list section from screenshot
4. Come back to NewDot and past the text using CMD + V

Expected Result:

Original texts should display in compose box.

Actual Result:

Unable to paste text with CMD + v in compose box.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

Select the officially supported platforms where the issue was reproduced:

• Android: App
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: App
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• iOS: mWeb Chrome
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Platforms Tested:

On which of our officially supported platforms was this issue tested:

• Android: App
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: App
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• iOS: mWeb Chrome
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

macOS_chrome_safari.mp4

Recording.135.2.mp4

Recording.3165.mp4

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• Last Price Increase: 2025-07-08
• Automatic offers:
• nkdengineer | Contributor | 107965784

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @garrettmknight

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @garrettmknight (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.

[dmkt9]

Proposal

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

Unable to paste text with CMD + v in compose box.

What is the root cause of that problem?

1. When copying HTML content and pasting it into the Composer component, the pastedHTML will be truncated with a limit of maxLength = CONST.MAX_COMMENT_LENGTH + 1 (where CONST.MAX_COMMENT_LENGTH = 10000).
   

   App/src/hooks/useHtmlPaste/index.ts

   Line 40 in aeffce7

   const useHtmlPaste: UseHtmlPaste = (textInputRef, preHtmlPasteCallback, isActive = false, maxLength = CONST.MAX_COMMENT_LENGTH + 1) => {

   
   

   App/src/hooks/useHtmlPaste/index.ts

   Line 158 in aeffce7

   handlePastedHTML(pastedHTML);

   
   https://github.com/Expensify/expensify-common/blob/12c73695718b2359ea20755e6484a18677ab3094/lib/ExpensiMark.ts#L1245
2. This has been explained here:
   https://github.com/Expensify/expensify-common/blob/12c73695718b2359ea20755e6484a18677ab3094/lib/ExpensiMark.ts#L1237-L1244

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

1. Approach 1:

• The long HTML text results from having a large number of style attributes, which are very lengthy.
• The htmlToMarkdown function does not process these style attributes, causing them to remain in the input text and leading to performance issues during parsing.

Solution:

• We can add a regex to remove the style attribute or any other unnecessary attributes at the beginning of htmlToMarkdownRules, while also removing the maxLength limit.
  https://github.com/Expensify/expensify-common/blob/12c73695718b2359ea20755e6484a18677ab3094/lib/ExpensiMark.ts#L565

• Alternatively, we can pre-process the HTML text before passing it to the main processing function. This ensures that the maxLength is still enforced and that only the necessary HTML text is passed to the parser.
  For example:
  

  App/src/hooks/useHtmlPaste/index.ts

  Line 158 in aeffce7

  handlePastedHTML(pastedHTML);

handlePastedHTML(pastedHTML.replaceAll(/(<style\b[^>]*>[\s\S]*?<\/style>)|(style\s*=\s*(["']).*?\3)/g, ""));

2. Approach 2:
Change maxLength accordingly.

What specific scenarios should we cover in automated tests to prevent reintroducing this issue in the future?

N/A

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

N/A

bandicam.2025-06-07.18-08-19-832.mp4

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~021932087512760984775

[melvin-bot]

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

[nkdengineer]

Proposal

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

Unable to paste text with CMD + v in compose box.

What is the root cause of that problem?

For the too long content, we will truncate it in

https://github.com/Expensify/expensify-common/blob/12c73695718b2359ea20755e6484a18677ab3094/lib/ExpensiMark.ts#L1236-L1247

and the generatedMarkdown now can't be decoded in

https://github.com/Expensify/expensify-common/blob/12c73695718b2359ea20755e6484a18677ab3094/lib/ExpensiMark.ts#L1259

because it doesn't contain enough content to decode, so we can't see anything

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

We should truncate the content only after decode

1. Remove this block
2. Truncate the final result

let result = str_1.default.htmlDecode(this.replaceBlockElementWithNewLine(generatedMarkdown));
        if (maxBodyLength > 0) {
            /*
             * Some HTML sources (such as Microsoft Word) have headers larger than the typical maxLength of
             * 10K even for a small body text. So the text is truncated after extracting the body element, to
             * maximise the amount of body text that is included while still staying inside the length limit.
             */
            result = result.slice(0, maxBodyLength);
        }
        return result;

What specific scenarios should we cover in automated tests to prevent reintroducing this issue in the future?

None

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

We can prevent to paste too long content (i.e. 20k characters)

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