Add userTriggered

[Juice10]

What does userTriggered indicate?

userTriggered gets added to input events that indicates if this event was triggered directly by the user or not.
Example of userTriggered in action: User clicks on radio element (userTriggered: true) which triggers the other radio element to change (userTriggered: false)

Background:

When analysing RRweb events I was having a hard time trying to figure out if an event was directly generated by a user or not. This PR adds a notation to indicate wherever this was the case or not.

Naming considerations: I was doubting if userTriggered or isTrusted was the right name for this attribute. But since isTrusted doesn't completely cover all the cases I thought userTriggered might be a better name.

[Yuyz0112]

Thanks, @Juice10 !

Things I'm thinking about

1. So we can put more things into userTriggered when we have things other than isTrusted?
2. Although it's just a boolean flag to some events, it's still something not related to record and replay, because it does not have a visual effect. It's totally okay to add this property, but I'm wondering whether we should implement a plugin system so only users who use the userTriggeredPlugin will have this data collected. This may help us have a minimal data structure and flexible extensions.

[Juice10]

Thanks, @Juice10 !

Things I'm thinking about

1. So we can put more things into userTriggered when we have things other than isTrusted?

Because this also covers events for radio buttons that get automatically get unselected when you click on a different radio button. I believe technically ‘isTrusted’ would be true in this case. (But I could be wrong and then ‘isTrusted’ would be a perfect name for it.)

2. Although it's just a boolean flag to some events, it's still something not related to record and replay, because it does not have a visual effect. It's totally okay to add this property, but I'm wondering whether we should implement a plugin system so only users who use the userTriggeredPlugin will have this data collected. This may help us have a minimal data structure and flexible extensions.

Could you elaborate a bit on how you’d like the plug-in system to work? I’m guessing you’d want something more elaborate than a simple config flag to toggle this data collection on and off.

[eoghanmurray]

it's still something not related to record and replay, because it does not have a visual effect

I'd say that in the context of a replayer, there may be cases where you'd want to have a visual effect when you know an event was performed by the user vs. otherwise.

[eoghanmurray]

@Yuyz0112 I talked to Justin about this today.
IMO this should be a config switch rather than a plugin.
I think plugins should be reserved for large features which would otherwise bulk out the .min.js payload if they were a config option.
E.g. with #598 would src/record/stringify.ts and initLogObserver code be excluded from the packed js if the replayConsole plugin is not included?

[Yuyz0112]

@eoghanmurray

Agree! I've found this feature needs much tiny modification in the core code path, so it's not a good idea to be a plugin.

@Juice10 Could you add an option for this feature?

BTW, I think #598 already helps prune the stringify/initLogObserver code from the main package.

[Juice10]

@Yuyz0112 I'd be happy to, will let you know when its done!

[Juice10]

@eoghanmurray @Yuyz0112 I added userTriggered behind the userTriggeredOnInput: true flag in the config and added tests and documentation for it as well.

[Yuyz0112]

The code looks good to me. Not sure why there is some code diff from other commits.

[Juice10]

@Yuyz0112 ah I think that's because I did a git rebase. I can create a new PR which won't have the excessive diff if you'd like. I can fiddle with the PR to fix it

[Juice10]

@Yuyz0112 fixed it, the diff should be correct now on this PR

[Yuyz0112]

@Juice10 So we only apply this to input event, but not to other events like mouse interactions?

[Juice10]

@Yuyz0112 yes thats correct

[Juice10]

@Yuyz0112 Im happy to implement this for mouse as well later on, once I've found some good ways of replicating it.

[YunFeng0817]

@Juice10 I found this option doesn't perform any work in the replay part. Did I miss something?

[Juice10]

Good catch @Mark-Fenng! It should only be on the recording end. I'm going to remove it on the replayer today.