[HOLD for payment 2023-03-16] Allow searching for phone numbers with parenthesis, spaces and dashes in them

[puneetlath]

Problem

It is very common for phone numbers to be formatted with dashes, parenthesis, and spaces. For example, my iPhone will automatically format 2345678899 to (234) 567-8899. If I then copy that phone number into the New Chat page in Expensify, it won't recognize it as a phone number that I can create a chat with. It only recognizes 2345678899 or +12345678899.

This is unlike the sign in page, which handles phone numbers like this just fine.

Solution

Treat phone numbers with these characters as phone numbers. We should not modify the user's input that they type, but we should strip these characters when validating whether it is a phone number. That would mean that I can create a chat with (234) 567-8899. Or, if I search for (234) 567-8899 it will find my chat with +12345678899.

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0185423b9270557864
• Upwork Job ID: 1630220601905479680
• Last Price Increase: 2023-02-27

[narefyev91]

Hello, I'm Nicolay from Callstack and I'm interested in taking and analysing this issue to work on a fix for it.

[MelvinBot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0185423b9270557864

[MelvinBot]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor Plus for review of internal employee PR - @sobitneupane (Internal)

[puneetlath]

Great, looking forward to working with you @narefyev91. Please post a high-level proposal here about how you plan to approach the solution before you raise a PR. You can use the proposal template here. Thanks!

[vegtelenseg]

Proposal

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

Allow searching for phone numbers with parenthesis, spaces and dashes in them

What is the root cause of that problem?

The onChangeText handler of the OptionsSelector passes the user input as is (i.e including hyphens and brackets) instead of sanitising it first, before passing it down to getNewChatOptions.

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

Before passing the user input as an argument to onChangeText handler, a regex can be employed to remove all the unnecessary characters in the phone number so that the function that does the searching, receives input that matches the internal structure of a valid phone number.

The flow would be as follows:

1. If user input has any characters (with or without special characters), then it is either a name or email address, therefore
2. Continue as normal
3. If input has some special characters (without regular characters), then assume it is a number, therefore
4. Apply the regex, and then
5. Continue as normal (but now using the result of step 4)

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)