Use fallback user avatar in cases where the user is unknown to us

[Kicu]

Details

• the logic that decides which avatar to show is now heavily consolidated into the <Avatar> component
• right now the source of truth is almost always avatar prop from personalDetails. It is returned from backend, and any user "known" to us will have such accountId
• we will now display FallbackAvatar when:
  • there is no details/accountID
  • when accountID was optimistically set in TS code
  • as a final fallback in Avatar component (that behaviour is unchanged)
• I eliminated 30+ calls to getAvatar() because what they mostly did was use source + accountID to decide whether to show SVG version of default avatar or Concierge avatar. Now source prop is simply passed through the components and the call to getAvatar() is done only once inside <Avatar />.

special note for icons:

• I tried to avoid manually setting FallbackAvatar but sometimes when creating icons object I have to do it, because of patterns like this one: https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/components/OptionRow.tsx#L207 - The existence of icons object decides whether any kind of Avatar will be shown. That is why you will find ?? FallbackAvatar in some places

Fixed Issues

$ #38743
PROPOSAL:

Tests

1. go to every place in the app where we can display an unknown user and verify that the avatar next to them is the fallback one (and not the colorful one)
2. places to verify:

• search option from Chats list
• searching users from "Start chat"
• searching users from "Request money"
• searching users from "Send money"
• searching users from "Assign Task"
• searching users from Workspace list > Workspace > Members > Invite member

3. browse through the app and verify that no other avatar logic was broken

Offline tests

QA Steps

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

PR Author Checklist

• I linked the correct issue in the ### Fixed Issues section above
• I wrote clear testing steps that cover the changes made in this PR
  • I added steps for local testing in the Tests section
  • I added steps for the expected offline behavior in the Offline steps section
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  • I added steps to cover failure scenarios (i.e. verify an input displays the correct error message if the entered data is not correct)
  • I turned off my network connection and tested it while offline to ensure it matches the expected behavior (i.e. verify the default avatar icon is displayed if app is offline)
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Screenshots/Videos

Android: Native

rec-fallback-andr-SM.mp4

Android: mWeb Chrome

iOS: Native

rec-fallback-ios-SM.mp4

iOS: mWeb Safari

MacOS: Chrome / Safari

rec-fallback-web-1.mp4

rec-fallback-web-2.mp4

MacOS: Desktop

[melvin-bot]

@s77rt 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]

[s77rt]

Avoid explicitly setting the fallback avatar i.e. replace all instance were we return the fallback avatar with returning null or undefined. Then in the Avatar component if no source is provided then use the fallback avatar

[s77rt]

Suggested change

avatar: UserUtils.getFallbackAvatar(),

[Kicu]

@s77rt that is a good comment in general and I'd prefer to not return the fallback avatar explicitly.
However originally I didn't do it, since there are places that use icons and they require a source, which means because of typescript I need to go over multiple places in the app and allow a missing avatar/icon to pass through so that in the end the fallback can be applied.
This might require a lot of changes, but perhaps its worth it.

I will try to clean this up so that we never pass FallbackAvatar through function calls

[Kicu]

@s77rt I have now spent a few hours trying to refactor to returning undefined instead of fallback avatar.
That will require changes in a lot of places, because the function getAvatar (https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/libs/UserUtils.ts#L158) would have to start returning AvatarSource | undefined.

That function is used in 10+ files multiple times, and it affects many places - multiple parts of the app that display avatars depend on it. Often its used when creating icons[] which are of type OnyxCommon.Icon which requires a source to always be there. I don't want to touch logic for displaying multiple icons or multiple avatars.

Some examples of usage that you can check:

• usage when creating several icons: https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/libs/ReportUtils.ts#L1608
• as part of icons for 1 item: https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/pages/home/report/ReactionList/BaseReactionList.tsx#L75

(as a quick test you can try to modify the return type of getAvatar() to AvatarSource | undefined and then run typecheck and see what is affected)

In general this change would affect so many places in the code that I believe its not worth doing in this PR.
I suggest that we keep my original code. What do you think?

[s77rt]

Found 2 missing cases where we should use the fallback avatar if user is not found in onyx

• In ReportUtils.getPersonalDetailsForAccountID
• In ProfilePage

[s77rt]

We may have a problem in ReportUtils.getDisplayNamesWithTooltips because it has a param personalDetailsList that may accept data that is both from or not from onyx. It's not clear if the avatar should use default or fallback.

Currently using default which causes the following bug (in money request)

[Kicu]

@s77rt
Thanks for pointing out the problem. That bug made me go down the rabbit hole of the avatar logic and I spend a lot of time trying come up with a reasonable fix.
... at this point I don't believe any sensible fix is possible 😅

tl;dr
We are generating optimistic IDs for participants before we even call backend and we do this in several places of the app. Because of it there is no easy way to guess whether a participantDetails object represents an actual user that we "know" or if it represents just temporary optimistic data create somewhere in the app.

Example places where this happens (there might be more):

• getOptions (https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/libs/OptionsListUtils.ts#L1815-L1819) which is used in multiple places by <OptionsList or similar components; any callbacks passed down to options list will get personal details lists, and there might be optimistic id inside.
  For example in here: https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/pages/iou/steps/MoneyRequstParticipantsPage/MoneyRequestParticipantsSelector.js#L168 - its very difficult to know whether accountID inside participant was optimistic or not
• getAccountIDsByLogins (https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/libs/PersonalDetailsUtils.ts#L99-L101) - used when opening new report and set as optimisticData in api call inside Report.openReport(). This gets saved to Onyx as optimistic data.
  Again, when outside of context of calling Report.openReport() there are components which do not have knowledge whether an accountID is optimistic or not

As you can see in the described examples ☝️ I think there is no way to simply tell whether the user IS or IS NOT known to us, and base the fallback avatar logic on this.
Calling @grgia since you originally created this issue.

At this point Im not sure what is the best way forward, I'm reluctant to modify code related to optimistic accountID generation since it touches multiple places in the app.
Or perhaps I misunderstood something related to this task, in that case point me in a better direction.

[grgia]

@Kicu

We can definitely call it on this one if it's proving a rabbit hole to fix. It's not high enough priority if it's proven to be complex.

One idea to fix this is by tracing/removing all of the getDefaultAvatar calls in app, if we just store the default avatar in the source for users (BE) then we'd be able to tell which users we know/have an avatar set. Then default to the fallback whenever the source is empty.

We'd then use one single call to getDefaultAvatar in the avatar component to switch to the crisp SVGs/grab the local concierge, etc. avatars.

Let me know if that's something you already ruled out

[Kicu]

@grgia Thanks for the suggestion, I think this is something that is worth investigating.

if we just store the default avatar in the source for users (BE) then we'd be able to tell which users we know/have an avatar set.

In this scenario who would do the storing? Frontend code when making an api call and sending it to backend? or backend would do this on their end and always return an avatar url?
I'm asking because this is related to the "is the user known to us" issue - Im no longer sure I know when we decide that the user "is known" to us 😅

Otherwise I think this is a sound idea to base the avatar on 1 field (url) instead of calling getDefaultAvatar + getAvatar in 20+ places in the app as we do right now.

The only complication I can see is that in some places we don't use a property avatar but rather create an array of icons (example: https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/libs/OptionsListUtils.ts#L373-L380 or here: https://github.com/Expensify/App/blob/main/src/libs/OptionsListUtils.ts#L1838).
I worry if that no icons will be returned then that might affect some display logic.
But that is something I will try to quickly investigate now.

Tell me what you think

[blazejkustra]

Code looks much cleaner now, but you have conflicts and a lint failing 👍

[Kicu]

this line gives us 100% guarantee that there will be something in the source prop, so that we will at the worst always display FallbackAvatar (if source and accountID are missing).

Thanks to that we can just pass props directly into the Avatar component, and we don't have to call .getAvatar() in multiple places in code.

[s77rt]

This bug #39229 (comment) is on staging so let's not block on that

[Kicu]

@s77rt ready for re-review

[blazejkustra]

LGTM!

[grgia]

what's the originalSource?

[s77rt]

It's just the source prop renamed to originalSource. We defined a new variable source variable inside.

const source = isWorkspace ? originalSource : UserUtils.getAvatar(originalSource, accountID);

The new source variable will take the original source and use the svg version of the avatar if possible.

[grgia]

Code / changes LGTM, quick question before merging:

Are we still displaying the SVG files?

[s77rt]

Yes #39229 (comment)

[grgia]

Thanks @s77rt !

[grgia]

Nice work on this one @Kicu

[OSBotify]

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

[OSBotify]

🚀 Deployed to staging by https://github.com/grgia in version: 1.4.66-0 🚀

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

[OSBotify]

🚀 Deployed to staging by https://github.com/grgia in version: 1.4.66-0 🚀

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

[OSBotify]

🚀 Deployed to production by https://github.com/mountiny in version: 1.4.66-5 🚀

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