Optimize rerendering of recent conversations for single message events.

[laurynmm]

Currently, when new messages are received (either via the events API or fetching messages), the Recent conversations view will do a complete_rerender if any of the processed messages has data that has been updated/added to the view.

Instead of completely rerendering when processing a single message (most likely from the events API), it would preferable to optimize so that we only update the conversation that was updated for the new message data when/if possible.

Follow-up issue from #23603 and #23617.

@zulipbot add "area: recent-conversations"

[laurynmm]

@zulipbot add "help wanted"

[cledi01]

Hi @laurynmm , this issue looks really interesting so I started digging around :). So currently, as far as my understanding goes when the messages are being fetched for the first time to complete-rerender being called, this is the callstack:

and this is the callstack when a message comes in from the events api:

And it seems like complete_rerender is being called indiscriminately in the process_messages function. I think at the "insert_new_messages" function, I'm thinking a simple conditional and a new function "update_message" in recent_topics_ui.js can solve the problem.

Does this approach sound reasonabe to you? I would really appreciate the feedback.

[laurynmm]

@cledi01 - I think it'd be good to look at the code paths that call recent_topics_ui.inplace_rerender as well since those are examples of cases where we're already not doing a complete rerender of the view. See this comment from one of the pull requests noted above.

[dartaylor8]

Hi, I am a student at Carnegie Mellon working on a group project for my Foundations of Software Engineering class.

Is it ok if my group helps out with this issue for our project?

[ilaiyengar]

@zulipbot claim

[alya]

@dartaylor8 We don't have any special rules for class projects. Your group should follow the general guidelines for all contributors. https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/overview/contributing.html

Have fun!

[ilaiyengar]

@laurynmm I am working on a solution and was trying to look into inplace_rerender. Do you happen to know what exactly this function's intended purpose is? Thanks!

[laurynmm]

@ilaiyengar - I would look at the places that inplace_rerender is used in the static/js directory. So, doing a git-grep for that would give you the difference places to look for when / why / how that function is being called: git grep 'inplace_rerender' static/js. If you're not super familiar with git-grep, here's a blog post I wrote about it when I was learning to use it last year.

[ilaiyengar]

Thanks so much! I will look into this.

[zulipbot]

@ilaiyengar You have been unassigned from this issue because you have not made any updates for over 14 days. Please feel free to reclaim the issue if you decide to pick up again. Thanks!

[Ujjawal3]

@zulipbot claim.

[zulipbot]

@Ujjawal3 You have been unassigned from this issue because you have not made any updates for over 14 days. Please feel free to reclaim the issue if you decide to pick up again. Thanks!