This bug regularly drives me close to insanity yet I have not been able to find anyone else with this bug. Incidentally I did try multiple searches today to try and find someone else with this bug and after about 10 searches, the forum search decided I had tried to perform that action too many times. So, if this is a duplicate, not my fault.
This bug is when writing code, usually when creating your own script.
While I type, something in the background changes the code, deletes a character I just typed or moves the cursor somewhere else in the script.
I think it's probably some delayed intellisense but sometimes it's so bad that it takes me minutes to write something I should be able to write in seconds, its infuriating, literally to the point that I decide that I can't work with Retool that day.
Has anyone else experienced this? If you have, please +1 as I'm sure I've raised this over a year ago and it's not improved at all.
I think this is the same bug as here... which was fixed at one point. I've noticed it happening again recently, but for me it happens more often when I'm at the office than when I'm at home which makes me think its a network issue of some sort. like a dropped packet or something, its like I press a key and the letter shows up on my end but the retool server didn't get the change so when the UI redraws it retrieves the code without the new letter effectively deleting what I type)
Apologies for this issue. I just raised this internally to see what our engineers can do about this.
We have been working to make improvements to the platform to make developing as smooth as possible.
As @bobthebear pointed out, this sounds like it could be an issue with dropped packets, where the app should be saving everything typed out as expected but in fact the changes are not saved and then an incomplete app is fetched from the server, effectively deleting thins randomly.
I can see if our engineering team can work on some way to further set up a fail-safe to grab changes and have a secondary save attempt made. This way, if the first fails it can try again to ensure that there is a queue of saves to add in and keep anything from slipping through the cracks!
Apologies again and thank you for raising these concerns as we take the quality of our product very seriously and don't want anyone to be frustrated with the user experience
@Ross_Coombes as @bobthebear stated, if you notice this issue spiking, could you try switching wifi networks/locations to see if there is any changes to the behavior
If anyone has reproducible steps that we can show to our engineering team to replicate this issue it would be very helpful.
As currently it sounds like a networking issues but we do want to make sure that there is backup fail-safe change saving functionality so that even if a save request is not completed from the front end to the backend that the app knows this and is able to re-submit the save request.
@Chris_Ryan Yes, I believe it would show that the request has failed, with an error response, in the browser's inspector if the issue is networking related.
It sounds like you were checking for this, and did not see clear evidence to indicate that networking was the clear culprit
This is a super tricky issues to pin down as on our end we haven't been able to reproduce this. The potential next step would be checking the payload being sent to the /save endpoint when a known change was not persisted, to see if the payload with the missing changes gives a 200.
If we can see /saves with the changes going through then this is a much deeper issue on the server side to dig into further
I'll try to capture the /save calls when the js editor starts acting up again.
I have a screen recording of the issue occurring, if that helps. I'm guessing the /save payload's contents + a screen shot will be more helpful though, assuming they are out of sync or something.
Okay, so I captured the /save call's payload, and it matches what is on my screen. It actually has 3 payloads, the second one is right before i type the letter 'l', and the next payload shows the lack of 'l' and instead a carriage return or something? + the rest the characters 'ink' which I typed because I was typing out the word 'link'.
This is feeling less like a networking issue, and an issue with whatever engine is running the js editor. Maybe bad interaction with browser plugin or.. who knows.
Anyway, would sending you the request payload be helpful?
Yes send me as much stuff as you can, for me to show to the engineers to get this fixed
Screen shots along with the request payloads and their IDs would be amazing, showing the requests are out of sync on typing out 'link' will be a great example.
It sounds like it could definitely be related to the engine running the IDE environment as opposed to networking.
I have the same issue, and can see other threads raising the same issue. This is very frustrating and slows down editing, often have to edit the same code 3 or 4 times before it sticks.
Apologies for the annoying sound but this video pretty much captures the issue.
It seems at it's worse when you are using the Script feature on any component's events. I've had this issue across many networks now, anecdotally I do think it's worse when connection speeds are low.
In this video, you can see that character's keep getting removed from the editor as I type (I did not press the backspace button at any point).
It seems most linked to the "p" command as you can see from the network tab which I can email separately if you wish.
Are there any steps to reproduce this behavior or is it very random? I just added your plus 1 to the ticket as well. Going to circle back with the eng team to see if they have more details from their investigation.
This happens to me basically any time I use a script entry window that isn't anchored inside a pane. It doesn't even have to be the full, resizable pop-out window that a lot of these little windows offer.
Having the editor unexpectedly and randomly fight me over characters is very frustrating and when it happens whatever development momentum I have in the moment craters.
Given this has been occurring at least since Nov '23 — see this related thread, which was closed despite subsequent reports of it not being fixed — and so many users have reported it while regularly being asked for repro steps, it makes me question how much dog-fooding (i.e. usage of software by the users building it) is happening at Retool.
See attached short video wherein I'm attempting to edit the click handler of a table's row action, but the text entry position keeps moving and/or deleting what I've entered.
In terms of my connection, I'm getting consistent 300mbps down / 40mbps up. we're on Retool Cloud, v3.186.0-7667538 (Build 240269)