Home navbar search fails when search term contains leading or trailing whitespace

Description:

The Home navbar search (Ctrl + K) does not return expected results when the search term contains leading or trailing whitespace.

For example, searching for general successfully finds the channel, but searching for general, general , or general returns no results. The same behavior is observed when searching for channels (#) and direct messages (@).

This causes valid searches to fail if users accidentally enter extra spaces before or after the search term.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open the Home navbar search (Ctrl + K).
2. Search for an existing channel or user (e.g. general or @username).
3. Repeat the search with leading or trailing whitespace, for example:
   • general
   • general
   • general
   • # general
   • @username
4. Observe the search results.

Expected behavior:

Leading and trailing whitespace should be ignored, and the search should return the same results as the trimmed search term.

Actual behavior:

The search treats surrounding whitespace as part of the query, causing valid channels and users not to appear in the search results.

Server Setup Information:

• Version of Rocket.Chat Server: 8.8.0-develop
• License Type: Community
• Number of Users: N/A
• Operating System: Ubuntu 24.04 (WSL2)
• Deployment Method: Development
• Number of Running Instances: 1
• DB Replicaset Oplog: Enabled
• NodeJS Version: 22.22.3
• MongoDB Version: 7.0.16

Client Setup Information

• Desktop App or Browser Version: Google Chrome (latest)
• Operating System: Windows 11

Additional context

This issue is reproducible with:

• Channel searches
• Direct message searches
• Searches with leading whitespace
• Searches with trailing whitespace
• Searches with both leading and trailing whitespace

Examples:

Relevant logs:

No relevant server or browser errors are produced. The issue is reproducible consistently through normal UI interaction.

Start by reproducing the issue in the Home navbar search with the listed channel and direct-message queries, then trace the search input handling from that UI entry point. The work is done when leading and trailing whitespace is ignored and the trimmed, prefixed, and unprefixed examples return the same results as their clean queries.