[HOLD for payment 2024-02-20] [HOLD for payment 2024-02-19] [HOLD for payment 2024-02-15] [$500] Camera doesn't load when trying to smartscan a receipt

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number: 1.4.38-1
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: @rlinoz
Slack conversation: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C049HHMV9SM/p1707336890268789

Action Performed:

1. Tap request money
2. Press the round button to take a picture
3. Tap the back arrow
4. Again press the Button to take a picture

Expected Result:

Able to scan the receipt again

Actual Result:

Camera doesn't load when trying to smartscan

Workaround:

unknown

Platforms:

Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

• Android: Native
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Native
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

az_recorder_20240207_173011.mp4

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• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0176ddbc1361cf082e
• Upwork Job ID: 1755378138365923328
• Last Price Increase: 2024-02-07
• Automatic offers:
• situchan | Contributor | 28150580
• aswin-s | Contributor | 28150626

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0176ddbc1361cf082e

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @s77rt (External)

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @garrettmknight (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details.

[aswin-s]

Proposal

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

Camera fails to load after navigating away and then returning to it

What is the root cause of that problem?

When user captures the photo first time and navigate to next screen, camera is set inactive here.

App/src/pages/iou/request/step/IOURequestStepScan/NavigationAwareCamera/index.native.js

Lines 13 to 23 in 9f37d3e

	const isCameraActive = useTabNavigatorFocus({tabIndex: cameraTabIndex});
	return (
	<Camera
	ref={ref}
	// eslint-disable-next-line react/jsx-props-no-spreading
	{...props}
	isActive={isCameraActive}
	/>
	);
	});

This causes the camera library to disable camera when users navigates away from TabNavigator. On refocus the video capture is re-enabled. However it throws below error.

 DEBUG  [warn] Error taking photo - {"name":"unknown/unknown","_code":"unknown/unknown","_message":"[unknown/unknown] Not bound to a valid Camera [ImageCapture:androidx.camera.core.ImageCapture-eab74056-9b89-4653-8288-e44bc9b65a66]"}

Though camera is enabled on refocus, photo capture fails. This looks like a bug in react-native-vision camera.

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

Looks like a fix is available upstream mrousavy/react-native-vision-camera#2339. But it is available only in release v3.70. We've pinned react-native-vision-camera at 2.16.5

App/package.json

Line 164 in 9f37d3e

"react-native-vision-camera": "2.16.5",

So one option is to upgrade to v3.7 which could be a major undertaking.

Instead what I found is that the camera gets re-enabled if we toggle the photo prop of Camera on refocus. This enables photo capture capabilities of camera on refocus and above error is not thrown any more.

    const isCameraActive = useTabNavigatorFocus({tabIndex: cameraTabIndex});
    return (
        <Camera
            ref={ref}
            // eslint-disable-next-line react/jsx-props-no-spreading
            {...props}
            isActive={isCameraActive}
            // Toggle the photo prop as well
            photo={isCameraActive}
        />
    );

Result

Record_2024-02-08-08-28-15_out.mp4

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

None

[trjExpensify]

Asked in thread here. Is this a deploy blocker if on staging only, or a fire if it's already on prod? It's a core flow, so if the camera can't load to take a receipt that's pretty bad!

[mountiny]

@aswin-s no we cannot simply update to v3, there are some feature missing unfortunately, like flash.

@janicduplessis @ishpaul777 any chance this could be stemming from this update? i see the camera worked for you both in the PR, not sure clearly ifyou have gone back and again to the camera, I would assume yes #35014

[aswin-s]

@mountiny I've detailed how we can fix this without a version upgrade

[hannojg]

We are looking into it whether we can find a better solution than the proposed workaround, give us a moment please!

(longterm we should look into upgrading V3!)
Tracking issue for that is here