GSoC '17 Summary: Improve zulip-mobile

Wednesday. August 23, 2017 - 6 mins

I got selected in Google Summer 2017 of Code under Zulip organization. Zulip is world’s most productive group chat platform. It is an open source alternative for Slack.

My proposal was to Improve and enhance current React Native app.

The following sections summarize all my PR’s and learnings.

Don’t show tick/done icon if realm is logged out. #556 merged
Handle narrow to unsubscribed stream. #564
Show smart placeholder for compose input. #599 merged
Improves login flow. #511 merged
Learned more about writing tests for functions, components etc, Jest
fix: app crash on sending PM notification bouncer. #498 merged (on zulip-android)
fix: Autocomplete not being displayed. #611 merged
Hide soft keyboard on form submission. Submit form with done button in keyboard #483 merged
Make autocomplete suggestions scrollable. #627 merged
Fix: Line shown when no # stream suggestion matches. #622 merged
Added clear button to clear search query. #629 merged
Done testing on iOS, Android 4.1.1, 4.2.2, 4.3, 4.4.4, 5.0.
Make links and #streams clickable in messages. #639 merged
Apply bold, italic, links, strikethrough styles in messages. merged #644
Show edited tag if messages are edited. #645 merged
[WIP] Emoji Picker. #646
Fix: error on message long press in messageSearchScreen. #655 merged
Improvement in messageActionSheet #658 merged
Restore theme after closing/reopening the app. #506 (on zulip-android)
Make message text color to black on Android. #663 merged
Added share option in messageActionSheet. #668 needs review
Open link in customTabs on Android. #670 merged
Use custom tabs to open links on Android (like FB messenger, FB, twitter etc). #669 merged
[WIP] Add share with/to feature. #674
Open SubscriptionsScreen on clicking All Streams in left drawer. #681 merged
Focus compose text after selecting reply. #686
Added Hindi translations in mobile.json on Transifex
Do not dismiss keyboard on clicking auto complete row. #695 merged
Highlight searched text with yellow color. #697 merged
Replaced TextInput with Input in StreamBox. #708 not required
Better logic to determine whether message is starred or not. #714 merged
Added star/unstar option in messageActionSheet. #715 merged
Written blog on What are linters?
Extracted auto complete pop up from ComposeText. #717 needs review
Search by initials and in email for people auto complete suggestions. #718
Handle realm emojis. #723 merged
Fix: ‘undefined is not an object’ in message search screen. #732 merged
Handle stream create, delete, update, occupy events. #730 merged
Ensure stream is valid before narrowing to it from link in messages. #735
Handle narrow to unsubscribed stream. #736 merged
Better handling of EVENT_MESSAGE_UPDATE. #752 merged
Prioritizes people autocomplete suggestions #762
[Android] Fix: messageList not displayed when keyboard pops up in SearchMessage Screen. #772 merged
Fix: email not visible in autocomplete on smaller devices. #776 merged
Added support of rendering math, mi, mn, math, mrow tags. #780 merged
fix: splitting message content in several lines. #790 merged
Added CSS styles for code rendering. #798 merged
Split class based and tag based text styles. #803 merged
fix: overlapping of forgot password and google button. #811 merged
Added Group Details Screen. #821 merged
Better code formatting #834 merged
Fix: @mention suggestions disappear after typing a space. #839 merged
Use actions object to get loginSuccess method in DevAuthScreen. #840 merged
Added null object constants. #852 merged
PR fix: jest errors. #858 merged
Added mfrac tag to render fractions in messages. #866 merged
No need to show action sheet on long press privateMessageHeader. #868 merged
Replaced maps with FlatList in AccountPickScreen. #869 merged
FIx: error on message long press. #870
Converted isSubscribed() function in Chat.js to a selector. #874 merged
Initial Implementation of Sentry. #881 merged
Filter deactivated users from UserScreen and PeopleAutocomplete. #889 merged
Disable switch in Subscription screen for private stream which is not subscribed. #888 merged
Fix: undefined error on toggling subscribe switch in subsriptionsScreen. #887 merged
Fix Android, iOS build. fix Sentry config to upload source map. #891 merged
fix: error on clicking switch account button. #894 merged
Fix: headers not being shown in user screen. #900 merged
Fix: undefined stream name in Lightbox. #901 merged
Show user status in UserScreen, PeopleAutocomplete and right drawer. #897 merged
Created selector to get subscribed streams. #911 merged
Fix: center align of quote text and bullets. #923 merged
fix: only active status is shown in UserStatusIndicator. #930
Renamed mentioned to mentions. #937 merged
Apply ‘user-mention-me’ styles to self mentions span. #938
Handle alert_words events and fetch them in rest of initial data. #957 merged
fix: mute topics are not updated on events. #959 merged
Use precise distributor for travis build. #958 merged
Translated some strings on Transifex in django.po and mobile.json
Fix: Android crash on entering realm url without protocol. #963 merged
Change sort order of streams list to match Zulip’s standards. #969 merged
Initial implementation of stream settings. #975
Added Muted Topic screen in Setting Detail Screen. #982
Created Alert words screen in Setting details screen. #986
Fix: autocomplete not being visible on current master. #989 merged
Fix: status bar style in dark theme for private narrow. #1004 merged
Better handling of create button in create group screen. #1013 another better one got merged
fix: message longPress not working. #1018 merged
Improve options selections in messageActionSheet. #1020 merged
Fix message editing. #1026 merged
Fix Status bar style issue in default theme. #1038
Fix: Compose menu action sheet not visible in Android. merged #1045
Fix: message long press not working. #1047 merged
Fix text not visible in Input/MultilineInput ComposeBox #1046 merged
Fix: list inside list message rendering. #1063 merged
Fix: warnings on clicking Add new Account button. #1069 merged
Fix: UserStatusIndicator not visible. #1071 merged
Rework on getAutocompletedText. #1078 merged
Focus message input after selecting reply from message action sheet. #1089 merged
Rework on delete option in message option. #1090 merged
Added tests for status bar style and titleSelectors. #1094 merged
Show auto complete suggestion when user types in middle/start of the input. #1095 merged

Conclusion

It was a great experience working for four months in my GSoC project under Zulip. Thanks Zulip community for your guidance and support. Thanks Google and Zulip for giving us this opportunity. 😄

Vishwesh Jainkuniya

Learner