Duplicate waypoint violation displayed when offline for invalid addresses

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number: 9.2.66-0
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: @rojiphil
Slack conversation (hyperlinked to channel name): #Expensify Bugs

Action Performed:

1. Navigate to a workspace chat
2. Turn off the internet connection on the device
3. Click "+" , Select "Track distance"
4. Click on the "Map" tab
5. Enter a non-existent address in both the start and stop waypoint fields (random characters should also work e.g. xxxxasd, yyyyasd)

Expected Result:

The violation should not be displayed and it should be possible to continue with expense creation.

Actual Result:

Please remove duplicate waypoints is displayed. Also, we cannot continue further.

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

Add any screenshot/video evidence

Recording.2000.mp4

76048-offline-issue.mp4

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[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @muttmuure (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.

[abbasifaizan70]

Proposal

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

When creating a distance expense offline with non-existent addresses (e.g., "xxxxasd", "yyyyasd") in the Map tab, the system incorrectly displays "Please remove duplicate waypoints" error and prevents the user from continuing. The expected behavior is that no violation should be displayed since these are different addresses.

What is the root cause of that problem?

When waypoints are saved offline with invalid addresses, they are stored with default coordinates lat: 0, lng: 0. The duplicate detection logic in getValidWaypoints compares coordinates using areSameCoordinate, which treats coordinates within 20 meters as the same. Since both waypoints with invalid addresses have [0, 0] coordinates (0 meters apart), they are incorrectly identified as duplicates even though they have different addresses.

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

Update getValidWaypoints in App/src/libs/TransactionUtils/index.ts to only compare coordinates when both waypoints have valid (non-zero) coordinates.

File: App/src/libs/TransactionUtils/index.ts

Before:

// Check for adjacent waypoints with the same address or coordinate
const previousCoordinate: Coordinate = [previousWaypoint?.lng ?? 0, previousWaypoint?.lat ?? 0];
const currentCoordinate: Coordinate = [currentWaypoint.lng ?? 0, currentWaypoint.lat ?? 0];
if (previousWaypoint && (currentWaypoint?.address === previousWaypoint.address || utils.areSameCoordinate(previousCoordinate, currentCoordinate))) {
    return acc;
}

After:

// Check for adjacent waypoints with the same address or coordinate
const previousCoordinate: Coordinate = [previousWaypoint?.lng ?? 0, previousWaypoint?.lat ?? 0];
const currentCoordinate: Coordinate = [currentWaypoint.lng ?? 0, currentWaypoint.lat ?? 0];
// Check if coordinates are default/invalid (0, 0) - in this case, only compare addresses
const previousHasValidCoordinate = previousWaypoint && (previousWaypoint.lng !== 0 || previousWaypoint.lat !== 0);
const currentHasValidCoordinate = currentWaypoint.lng !== 0 || currentWaypoint.lat !== 0;
const isDuplicate =
    (previousWaypoint && currentWaypoint?.address === previousWaypoint.address) ||
    (previousHasValidCoordinate && currentHasValidCoordinate && utils.areSameCoordinate(previousCoordinate, currentCoordinate));
if (previousWaypoint && isDuplicate) {
    return acc;
}

This ensures waypoints with different addresses but default [0, 0] coordinates are not treated as duplicates, while still correctly identifying duplicates when both waypoints have valid coordinates.

[tsa321]

Proposal

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

Duplicate waypoint violation displayed when offline for invalid addresses

What is the root cause of that problem?

:
When a user enters an invalid address, the waypoint latitude and longitude stay at zero.

App/src/pages/iou/request/step/IOURequestStepWaypoint.tsx

Lines 165 to 166 in f82a8db

	lat: values.lat ?? 0,
	lng: values.lng ?? 0,

and some comment says:

// While the user is offline, the auto-complete address search will not work
// Therefore, we're going to save the waypoint as just the address, and the lat/long will be filled in on the backend

when waypoints are validated: the utils.areSameCoordinate(previousCoordinate, currentCoordinate) in getValidWaypoints on:

App/src/libs/TransactionUtils/index.ts

Line 1381 in f82a8db

if (previousWaypoint && (currentWaypoint?.address === previousWaypoint.address || utils.areSameCoordinate(previousCoordinate, currentCoordinate))) {

It will treat the two addresses as the same waypoint because areSameCoordinate checks the waypoint’s latitude and longitude. Since both are 0, it considers them the same coordinates.

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

areSameCoordinate is used to prevent inserting the same current location when it’s within a 20-meter radius, to avoid treating slightly different GPS readings as separate locations.

Since the 0 longitude and latitude values are used only when offline, we can add a guard at that line to:

if (previousWaypoint && (currentWaypoint?.address === previousWaypoint.address || (utils.areSameCoordinate(previousCoordinate, currentCoordinate) && (currentWaypoint.lat !== 0 || currentWaypoint.lng !== 0)))) {

by adding currentWaypoint.lat !== 0 && currentWaypoint.lng !== 0 we are not comparing the default value.

or we could change it to:

let isSameCoordinate = (currentWaypoint.lat !== 0 || currentWaypoint.lng !== 0) && utils.areSameCoordinate(previousCoordinate, currentCoordinate)

if (previousWaypoint && (currentWaypoint?.address === previousWaypoint.address || isSameCoordinate) {

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

Since latitude 0 and longitude 0 is point to an exist location, we could change the default value to be undefined, to make the code more reliable

[linhvovan29546]

Duplicate of #75773