fix: stop the course outline scrolling back while you work in it [backport to verawood]

[ihor-romaniuk]

Description

Backport of #3213 to release/verawood.

Open a course outline through a link that points at one of its blocks — the kind Studio search and "view in outline" produce, with ?show=<block> in the address — and the page starts snapping back to that block. Opening the menu on any section is enough to be thrown back to it, which makes the outline hard to work in at all. The block stays highlighted for as long as the link is in the address bar, and the outline reads that as "scroll to it" every time it re-renders.

The outline now scrolls to the highlighted block when you arrive and then leaves the page alone.

Implementation notes

• createGlobalState in src/data/apiHooks.ts returned setData and resetData as plain functions declared in the hook body, so both got a new identity on every render.
• SectionCard, SubsectionCard and UnitCard list resetScrollState among the dependencies of the effect that calls scrollToElement, so that effect ran on every render. While ?show= names the card, its guard isScrolledToElement stays true, so every render scrolled. The effect also calls resetScrollState(), which invalidates the query and causes another render — hence repeated jumps rather than one.
• The fix is in the hook rather than in the three cards: a hook whose callbacks are read as dependencies has to keep their identity, the way useQuery's refetch does. queryKey is memoised on queryKeyArgs so the callbacks can depend on it honestly, without a ref.
• Fixing the three dependency arrays instead would also work, but it leaves the same trap in place for every other caller of createGlobalState.

Screenshot/Video

Before

before.mov

After

after.mov

Testing

Preconditions: a course with several sections, a staff user.

1. Open the course outline with a block in the address, for example <AUTHORING>/course/<courseId>?show=<sectionId>.
2. Expected: the page scrolls to that section and highlights it — unchanged.
3. Scroll away from the highlighted section.
4. Open the menu on any other section.
5. Expected: the menu opens and the page stays where you left it. Before this change it scrolled back to the highlighted section.
6. Rename a section, then open and close a few menus.
7. Expected: the page stays put throughout.
8. Open the outline without ?show= and repeat.
9. Expected: unchanged.

Verified locally

Check	Result
Outline with ?show=<section>, scrolled to 6000px, section menu opened	page stays at 6000px; before the fix it scrolled to 3654px, a jump of 2346px
Arrival behaviour	still scrolls to the block and highlights it — one highlighted card, page settles at its top
Section menu	opens as before: aria-expanded flips and the dropdown renders
jest src/course-outline	32 suites, 357 tests
jest src/data/apiHooks.test.tsx	5 tests, including two new ones for the hook
Red/green	restoring the plain functions fails the new identity test
tsc, dprint, oxlint	clean
Not verified	One browser at 1440×863. The three card effects were left as they are, so the fix rests on the hook keeping its callbacks stable.

[openedx-webhooks]

Thanks for the pull request, @ihor-romaniuk!

This repository is currently maintained by @bradenmacdonald.

Once you've gone through the following steps feel free to tag them in a comment and let them know that your changes are ready for engineering review.

🔘 Get product approval

If you haven't already, check this list to see if your contribution needs to go through the product review process.

• If it does, you'll need to submit a product proposal for your contribution, and have it reviewed by the Product Working Group.
  • This process (including the steps you'll need to take) is documented here.
• If it doesn't, simply proceed with the next step.

🔘 Provide context

To help your reviewers and other members of the community understand the purpose and larger context of your changes, feel free to add as much of the following information to the PR description as you can:

• Dependencies

  This PR must be merged before / after / at the same time as ...

• Blockers

  This PR is waiting for OEP-1234 to be accepted.

• Timeline information

  This PR must be merged by XX date because ...

• Partner information

  This is for a course on edx.org.

• Supporting documentation
• Relevant Open edX discussion forum threads

🔘 Get a green build

If one or more checks are failing, continue working on your changes until this is no longer the case and your build turns green.

Details

---

Where can I find more information?

If you'd like to get more details on all aspects of the review process for open source pull requests (OSPRs), check out the following resources:

• Overview of Review Process for Community Contributions
• Pull Request Status Guide
• Making changes to your pull request

When can I expect my changes to be merged?

Our goal is to get community contributions seen and reviewed as efficiently as possible.

However, the amount of time that it takes to review and merge a PR can vary significantly based on factors such as:

• The size and impact of the changes that it introduces
• The need for product review
• Maintenance status of the parent repository

💡 As a result it may take up to several weeks or months to complete a review and merge your PR.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
⚠️ Please upload report for BASE (release/verawood@99ca9c9). Learn more about missing BASE report.

Additional details and impacted files

@@                 Coverage Diff                 @@
##             release/verawood    #3214   +/-   ##
===================================================
  Coverage                    ?   95.60%           
===================================================
  Files                       ?     1392           
  Lines                       ?    33141           
  Branches                    ?     7473           
===================================================
  Hits                        ?    31685           
  Misses                      ?     1403           
  Partials                    ?       53           

☔ View full report in Codecov by Harness.
📢 Have feedback on the report? Share it here.

🚀 New features to boost your workflow:

• ❄️ Test Analytics: Detect flaky tests, report on failures, and find test suite problems.
• 📦 JS Bundle Analysis: Save yourself from yourself by tracking and limiting bundle sizes in JS merges.