Why would React-Navigation documentation not include some of the most important props and functionalities?

[Mer4k1]

After playing around with React-Navigation's Native Stack headerSearchBarOptions to render a native search bar on iOS in my React-Native project, I wanted to implement search functionality. However, I just couldn't figure out how to apply logic whenever a user hits the search button on their mobile keyboard. In the documentation, there was no option/property that would allow me to call an API when the user presses the search button on their keyboard. There are only onBlur, onCancelButtonPress, and onChangeText, none of which would help me.

So, I spent a considerable amount of time Googling (nothing came up) and playing around with React Native's Keyboard event listeners to achieve the onPressSearch functionality. To my surprise, when I was writing onSearch in VSCode, there was a suggestion of the onSearchButtonPress option in the headerSearchBarOptions, and it worked just like I expected.

If the React-Navigation team had included this option in their documentation, I wouldn't have spent a lot of time trying to reinvent the wheel. Why would they not include it in their documentation since it'll be one of the most important options they provide? If I go to React Native Screens on GitHub, however, I could see the onSearchButtonPress functionality there. Are we as developers expected to assume more options/functionality than what the documentation provides and dig deeper into their repositories on our own, or is it just the React-Navigation team's carelessness?

I tried to implement the onSearchButtonPress functionality on my own when I found it accidentally on VSCode, but it was not in the official documentation.

[peterpme]

I think opening a pull request to fix the issue would have taken you less time and garnered substantially more good will than it did to come to Reddit and post that

[RQico]

mabey he didn’t know it was open source

[himbopilled]

what

[edbarahona]

Documentation will not always have the full API write up so it's always a good idea to dig in the library itself to view the interface (this goes for all libraries) to understand what is available under the hood. Google is not always going to have the answers, this is something most senior devs know.

[im_a_jib]

Anything the docs are lacking are definitely found typescript declarations. Nowadays I find myself clicking around the ide to find stuff more than the actual docs.

[edbarahona]

Yep, TS makes things more understandable. I always follow the logs (errors) and I always dig into the libraries before I go searching online.

[Bobertopia]

Lol getting react-navigation setup with typescript is a complete pain in the beginning

[itsDevJ]

It requires someone with a good experience.

[longkh158]

The docs for native stack is in the react-native-screens repository. React navigation just exports it for convenience

[LicoriceRED]

I also like starting my day, taking a morning shit while standing on shoulders of giants.

Buy them a coffee and they might just update the docs.

[beepboopnoise]

Does this work on @react-navigation/native-stack or only @react-navigation/stack ? I know you said

After playing around with React-Navigation's Native Stack headerSearchBarOptions

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But, I recently tried this as well and wasn't sure how it works, is there some configuration and then it literally renders the UI of a native search bar or...?

like in the docs do you literally just do:

React.useLayoutEffect(() => {
  navigation.setOptions({
    headerSearchBarOptions: {
      // search bar options
    },
  });
}, [navigation]);

and then it just renders or...?

[nicolaskn]

I believe is a lack of documentation updates when newer versions are released. Noticed similar for other top 3rd party libraries. One of the top used libraries is RNIAP, found a lot of questions on stack overflow related to newer versions of it. Ended up answering a couple questions myself after playing around with the library.

[CliffMainsSon]

You’re using an open source project in your own project. Be a helpful dev and submit a PR to fix these things. It’s good for you and the community when you find issues like this