[lexical][@lexical/table] Prevent nested table pastes while preserving table-selection pasting

[aldoprogrammer]

Summary

Prevent nested tables when pasting into table cells.

Testing

Original issue demo: #8077
After having conflict on this pr, pull latest and merged in main: issue still persist
Demo fix: video

Closes #8077

[vercel]

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
lexical	Ready	Preview, Comment	Jan 30, 2026 11:41pm
lexical-playground	Ready	Preview, Comment	Jan 30, 2026 11:41pm

[randal-atticus]

@aldoprogrammer Apologies, I might have caused the conflicts in this PR due to #8088, which I did preparation for another change relating to nested tables. That PR doesn't change any behaviour but it restructured SELECTION_INSERT_CLIPBOARD_NODES_COMMAND in a similar way.

For the avoidance of doubt, when hasNestedTables: true, a mixed-node clipboard should still insert a table into a cell (rather than pasting over the table) - that's consistent with how other editors seem to handle nested tables. Is that behaviour preserved here?

[etrepum]

This PR has conflicts with main due to another PR being merged, those conflicts need to be resolved before it can be considered for merge.

[aldoprogrammer]

Please do check again

[aldoprogrammer]

@aldoprogrammer Apologies, I might have caused the conflicts in this PR due to #8088, which I did preparation for another change relating to nested tables. That PR doesn't change any behaviour but it restructured SELECTION_INSERT_CLIPBOARD_NODES_COMMAND in a similar way.

For the avoidance of doubt, when hasNestedTables: true, a mixed-node clipboard should still insert a table into a cell (rather than pasting over the table) - that's consistent with how other editors seem to handle nested tables. Is that behaviour preserved here?

Yes @randal-atticus , the behavior is preserved. When hasNestedTables: true, mixed-node clipboards return false early, allowing the default paste handler to insert the table into the cell as a nested table rather than pasting over it.

[etrepum]

In what situation does $isTableSelection not work for this use case?

[etrepum]

getType should never be used for this use case, what situation are you trying to handle where $isTableNode doesn't work?

[aldoprogrammer]

Thanks for the feedback! Removed the unnecessary isTableSelectionLike function (using $isTableSelection directly) and replaced getType() === 'table' with $isTableNode(). Fixed in the latest commit.
@etrepum

[etrepum]

All of these guards can be used as-is, you don't have to wrap them in another function

Suggested change

	const isSelectionInsideOfGrid =
	(isRangeSelection &&
	anchorAndFocus !== null &&
	$findMatchingParent(selection.anchor.getNode(), (n) =>
	$isTableCellNode(n),
	) !== null &&
	$findMatchingParent(selection.focus.getNode(), (n) =>
	$isTableCellNode(n),
	) !== null) ||
	isTableSelection;
	const templateGrid = nodes.find((node): node is TableNode =>
	$isTableNode(node),
	);
	const hasOnlyTableNodes =
	nodes.length > 0 && nodes.every((node) => $isTableNode(node));
	const isSelectionInsideOfGrid =
	(isRangeSelection &&
	anchorAndFocus !== null &&
	$findMatchingParent(selection.anchor.getNode(), $isTableCellNode) !== null &&
	$findMatchingParent(selection.focus.getNode(), $isTableCellNode) !== null) ||
	isTableSelection;
	const templateGrid = nodes.find($isTableNode);
	const hasOnlyTableNodes =
	nodes.length > 0 && nodes.every($isTableNode);

[etrepum]

Suggested change

	const focusCellNode = $findMatchingParent(focus.getNode(), (n) =>
	$isTableCellNode(n),
	);
	const focusCellNode = $findMatchingParent(focus.getNode(), $isTableCellNode);

[etrepum]

The getWritable here is redundant, all of the accessor methods will already do this as needed. The identity of gridNode or direct access to its properties are not used here

Suggested change

	gridNode.getWritable(),
	gridNode,

[etrepum]

Suggested change

	gridNode.getWritable(),
	gridNode,

[etrepum]

This logic is wrong, for example the paragraphNode code does absolutely nothing because the child is moved out of the paragraphNode into the cell so the paragraphNode just becomes garbage. It's probably better to just assume that the template table is already normalized (or the destination will be normalized after the fact) than to try and do some ad-hoc normalization here.

Suggested change

	const originalChildren = cell.getChildren();
	templateCell.getChildren().forEach((child) => {
	if ($isTextNode(child)) {
	const paragraphNode = $createParagraphNode();
	paragraphNode.append(child);
	cell.append(child);
	} else {
	cell.append(child);
	}
	});
	originalChildren.forEach((n) => n.remove());
	}
	cell.splice(0, cell.getChildrenSize(), templateCell.getChildren());

[etrepum]

Suggested change

	gridNode.getWritable(),
	gridNode,