fix: handle new card creation from board footer

[tollenceld]

Fixes #8922

Problem

On desktop, in a board's column footer, clicking + New, typing a title, and then clicking outside the input closed the input without creating a card but kept the typed draft. Reopening + New showed the stale draft, and pressing Enter could then create a card with an empty title (reported as "Untitled"). Escape also left the old draft in place for the next attempt.

Root cause

In _BoardColumnFooterState (frontend/appflowy_flutter/lib/plugins/database/board/presentation/board_page.dart):

• Losing focus only set _isCreating = false; the TextEditingController was never cleared, so the draft survived.
• Escape only called _focusNode.unfocus(), which went through the same blur path and left the draft intact.
• onSubmitted had no empty-title guard, so pressing Enter with an empty title dispatched BoardEvent.createRow with an empty name, producing a card with an empty title. Because the input stayed focused after submit and the controller was cleared immediately after dispatch, a second Enter submitted the now-empty title.

Behavior

Consistent with the board's other trailing create input (_BoardTrailingState, "Add a new group", which cancels and clears on Escape and on blur), the footer now follows:

• Enter with a non-empty title → create the card (existing behavior, kept).
• Empty title + Enter → no-op (no empty/"Untitled" card).
• Blur (click outside) → cancel creation and clear the draft.
• Escape → cancel creation and clear the draft.
• Reopening + New always starts with a clean, empty input.

Changes

• _BoardColumnFooterState:
  • Added _cancelCreating(), which clears the controller and exits the creating state.
  • The focus-loss listener now calls _cancelCreating(), so blur and Escape share one cancellation path (Escape just unfocuses, and the listener performs the single cancellation).
  • onSubmitted ignores empty/whitespace-only titles.

Tests

Extended frontend/appflowy_flutter/integration_test/desktop/board/board_add_row_test.dart with five footer scenarios: empty-title submit, click-outside cancel + draft clear, Escape cancel + draft clear, double Enter, and submit-then-click-outside.

Local results:

• flutter analyze (full project): No issues found.
• dart format --output=none --set-exit-if-changed on changed files: clean.
• Board integration tests (board_add_row_test.dart, macOS local): 4 of 7 passed (from header, from footer, empty title submit, clicking outside). The escape test could not complete: sendKeyEvent(escape) hangs in the macOS live binding (key-event channel round trip). The same sendKeyEvent(escape) pattern is already used by existing board tests (board_row_test.dart, board_hide_groups_test.dart) on the repo's Linux CI, so this appears to be a local macOS tooling quirk rather than a product regression. The remaining two tests were not run locally.

Not run locally / pending: full integration-test pass on Linux (repo CI runs board tests via integration_test/desktop_runner_3.dart) and Windows behavior.

Manual verification

The contributor manually verified the current fix on a real device and did not observe any issues. The specific device and platform are not claimed here, and this does not replace automated cross-platform CI coverage.

CI and limitations

• Ninja i18n check passes. license/cla is pending (the contributor must sign the CLA via the CLA assistant link; this cannot be done from the CLI).
• The Flutter-CI workflow is not triggered while the PR is a draft, and external-contributor workflows may require a maintainer to approve them; action_required on the workflow means "awaiting maintainer approval", not a test failure.
• Windows and other platforms have not been tested locally; the change is platform-neutral Flutter code.

Draft status

Still a draft. Waiting on:

• Issue assignment or maintainer confirmation (claim comment posted on [Bug] Add a new card at the bottom #8922);
• CI workflow approval and execution;
• Maintainer feedback on the chosen interaction rules.

Summary by Sourcery

Ensure board column footer new-card input cancels cleanly and does not create unintended cards when blurred, escaped, or submitted with empty text.

Bug Fixes:

• Prevent creating cards with empty or whitespace-only titles from the board column footer input.
• Clear any draft text and exit creation mode when the footer input loses focus or Escape is pressed, avoiding stale drafts and accidental submissions.

Tests:

• Extend desktop board integration tests to cover footer behaviors for empty submit, blur cancel, Escape cancel, double Enter, and submit-then-blur without creating duplicates.

[CLAassistant]

All committers have signed the CLA.

[sourcery-ai]

Reviewer's Guide

Updates the board column footer’s new-card creation flow to cancel and clear drafts on blur/Escape, prevent empty-title submissions, and adds integration tests to lock in the corrected behaviors.

Sequence diagram for updated board footer card creation interactions

sequenceDiagram
  actor User
  participant BoardColumnFooter as _BoardColumnFooterState
  participant FocusNode as _focusNode
  participant BoardBloc

  User->>BoardColumnFooter: tap_plus_New()
  BoardColumnFooter->>BoardColumnFooter: setState(_isCreating = true)

  User->>BoardColumnFooter: type_title_in_textField()

  alt blur or Escape
    User->>FocusNode: unfocus()
    FocusNode-->>BoardColumnFooter: hasFocus == false (listener)
    BoardColumnFooter->>BoardColumnFooter: _cancelCreating()
    BoardColumnFooter->>BoardColumnFooter: _textController.clear()
    BoardColumnFooter->>BoardColumnFooter: setState(_isCreating = false)
  end

  alt submit non_empty_title
    User->>BoardColumnFooter: onSubmitted(name)
    BoardColumnFooter->>BoardColumnFooter: [name.trim().isNotEmpty]
    BoardColumnFooter->>BoardBloc: BoardEvent.createRow(columnId, name)
    BoardColumnFooter->>BoardColumnFooter: _textController.clear()
  else submit empty_or_whitespace_title
    User->>BoardColumnFooter: onSubmitted(name)
    BoardColumnFooter->>BoardColumnFooter: [name.trim().isEmpty]
    BoardColumnFooter-->>User: no_op (no card created)
  end

Loading

File-Level Changes

Change	Details	Files
Unify footer cancel behavior so blur/Escape both exit creating mode and clear the draft.	Wrap footer cancel logic in a new _cancelCreating() helper that clears the text controller and toggles _isCreating to false. Update the FocusNode listener to invoke _cancelCreating() instead of only flipping _isCreating, so losing focus always clears the draft.	frontend/appflowy_flutter/lib/plugins/database/board/presentation/board_page.dart
Prevent creating cards with empty or whitespace-only titles from the column footer input.	Add a guard in the footer TextField onSubmitted callback that returns early when the submitted name is empty or all whitespace before dispatching BoardEvent.createRow.	frontend/appflowy_flutter/lib/plugins/database/board/presentation/board_page.dart
Add integration tests covering footer new-card creation edge cases and interactions.	Introduce a helper Finder _footerTextField() that targets the footer TextField of the second column. Import flutter/services.dart to access LogicalKeyboardKey.escape in tests. Add tests for empty-title submit doing nothing, click-outside cancel + draft clear, Escape cancel + draft clear, double Enter creating only one card, and submit-then-click-outside not creating a duplicate card.	frontend/appflowy_flutter/integration_test/desktop/board/board_add_row_test.dart

Assessment against linked issues

Issue	Objective	Addressed	Explanation
#8922	When adding a card from the board column footer, clicking outside the input should create a card with the typed title instead of hiding or canceling it.	❌	The PR explicitly changes blur behavior to cancel creation and clear the draft (_cancelCreating() on focus loss) rather than creating a card. This fixes the hidden/stale draft bug but does not implement the requested behavior where clicking outside should create the card.
#8922	Prevent creation of cards with empty or "Untitled" titles when submitting via Enter from the column footer input.	✅
#8922	Ensure that when card creation is cancelled (e.g., by clicking outside or pressing Escape), any typed draft title is cleared so reopening "+ New" shows an empty, unselected input.	✅

Possibly linked issues

• [Bug] Add a new card at the bottom #8922: PR changes BoardColumnFooter to clear drafts on blur/Escape and block empty-title submits, matching the reported bug.

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[sourcery-ai]

Hey - I've left some high level feedback:

• The new tests rely on find.byType(BoardColumnFooter).at(1) for the footer, which is brittle if column ordering or counts change; consider using a more robust finder (e.g., by key or text) to target the intended footer.
• There is a lot of repeated setup across the new footer tests (initialize app, sign in, create board page, tap footer); extracting a shared helper or setUp routine would make the tests easier to maintain and adjust in the future.

Prompt for AI Agents

Please address the comments from this code review:

## Overall Comments
- The new tests rely on `find.byType(BoardColumnFooter).at(1)` for the footer, which is brittle if column ordering or counts change; consider using a more robust finder (e.g., by key or text) to target the intended footer.
- There is a lot of repeated setup across the new footer tests (initialize app, sign in, create board page, tap footer); extracting a shared helper or `setUp` routine would make the tests easier to maintain and adjust in the future.

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[tollenceld]

Addressed the Sourcery feedback by replacing the index-based footer lookup with a stable finder and extracting shared board/footer test setup helpers. No product behavior was changed.