[Gutenberg] Autosave

[etoledom]

This PR implements the Gutenberg autosave mechanism replacing the previously implemented client-side autosave.

Update: The new logic implemented is described on #12489 (comment)
Updated Gutenberg PR: WordPress/gutenberg#17548

• gutenberg-mobile PR: Add "Autosave" bridge methods and enable local auto-save of posts gutenberg-mobile#1351
• gutenberg PR: [RNMobile] Add autosave to mobile apps WordPress/gutenberg#17329
• WPAndroid PR: Fix for local auto save that doesn't work in Gutenberg WordPress-Android#10483
• Original issue (Android): Local auto-save doesn't work in Gutenberg WordPress-Android#10415

To test (updated):

• Run metro server on gutenberg-mobile:develop
• Create/open a Gutenberg post.
• Write some content.
  • You can check if editorDidAutosave() is invoked on every content change.
  • Check that debouncerCallback is invoked after 1 second of inactivity.
  • Check that debouncerCallback is invoked after typing 50 characters without break.
• Kill the app and restart it again.
• Check that the post was automatically saved.

Update release notes:

• I have considered if this change warrants user-facing release notes and have added them to RELEASE-NOTES.txt if necessary.

[koke]

I tested this and it works OK, however the behavior is different than it used to be. Previously, the debouncer logic would ensure that we autosaved at most once every 5 seconds. Now, it seems it will autosave after 2 seconds of inactivity.

I think the previous behavior was safer, as it ensured that if anything crashed you would lose at most 5 seconds of work. Now you could create a lot of content without pausing, and so without autosaving, and lose it all if the app crashes.

Also, let's keep in mind that the autosave logic in the web is meant to autosave to the server and AFAIK there's no local autosave concept (although it would be a nice feature addition 😉)

[mchowning]

@etoledom : do we want this to target the (just created) gb/release-1.13.0 branch?

[etoledom]

@etoledom : do we want this to target the (just created) gb/release-1.13.0 branch?

Sounds good! Just did the change 👍

[etoledom]

I think the previous behavior was safer, as it ensured that if anything crashed you would lose at most 5 seconds of work. Now you could create a lot of content without pausing, and so without autosaving, and lose it all if the app crashes.

I see what you mean. We could always reduce the inactivity time to 1 second? I'd guess it's quite a lot less likely for someone to write a big piece of content without any one second of inactivity.

@daniloercoli - what do you think?

[daniloercoli]

I see what you mean. We could always reduce the inactivity time to 1 second? I'd guess it's quite a lot less likely for someone to write a big piece of content without any one second of inactivity.

@daniloercoli - what do you think?

Yes, we can change it to 1 sec of inactivity, or even set a timer, or follow another logic we think is more appropriate for a mobile app with local storage. With this PR we're adding the autosaving to mobile-gb, before this PR nothing was autosaved, so I think there are room for improvement in another PR.

[etoledom]

With this PR we're adding the autosaving to mobile-gb, before this PR nothing was autosaved, so I think there are room for improvement in another PR.

We did have a timer on WPiOS requesting the current content to save it. That's the reason of @koke's comment here.

we can change it to 1 sec of inactivity, or even set a timer, or follow another logic we think is more appropriate for a mobile app with local storage.

Is nice that we have that flexibility. I would say to merge this change on WPiOS as it is now to use the same mechanism as WPAndroid, and as @daniloercoli mentioned, keep improving it. 👍

What do you think @koke ?

[etoledom]

Defaults are taken from WPAndroid.

[etoledom]

Update:

We have decided to implement a different approach for autosaving. This is to send content change events from Gutenberg, and let the native apps decide when is best to do an autosave.

We also changed the logic to decide when is best to autosave:

• We will wait for 1s of inactivity, or
• We will autosave after 50 continuous changes.

This new autosave logic has been implemented in both Gutenberg and Aztec, matching the logic on WPAndroid.

I have updated the initial PR description.
Note that it's still needed to run Metro server on gutenebrg-mobile:develop to properly test this PR.

cc @daniloercoli @maxme

[SergioEstevao]

Working great @etoledom ! Excellent to see that you also changed Aztec editor and sharing the code between the two editors.