Multicast sticky observable with on subscribe/on dispose behavior - rx-java2

I'm trying to create an Observable with the following characteristics:
allows multiple concurrent and/or consecutive subscribers
emits the last emitted item to every new subscriber
does something when the first subscriber subscribes, and when the last subscription is disposed
A BehaviorSubject with doOnSubscribe/doOnDispose satisfies #1 and #2, but runs subscribe/dispose for every subscriber instead of only the first and last. Adding share satisfies #1 and #3, but only emits the last emitted item to the first concurrent subscriber.
I came up with a solution that seems to work but feels like an ugly hack:
AtomicInteger subs = new AtomicInteger();
Observable<String> test = BehaviorSubject.createDefault("foo")
.doOnSubscribe(x -> {
if(subs.getAndIncrement() == 0) {
// do something
}
})
.doOnDispose(() -> {
if(subs.decrementAndGet() == 0) {
// do something
}
});
Is there an existing operator or combination of operators that achieves the same effect?

Use the replay operator with argument 1 i.e.
yourObservable.replay(1)
Edit: You are right that replay will return a connectedObservable and that the refcount operator will make it behave like on Observable i.e.
yourObservable.replay(1).refcount()

Related

How to combine 2 publishers and erase values to Void?

I have 2 publishers where I want to perform an action based on either response. I don't care about the values. I'm trying to do something like this:
var hasChangedPublisher: AnyPublisher<(Void, Void), Never> {
Publishers.CombineLatest(
preferences.publisher,
state.$permissionStatus
).eraseToAnyPublisher()
}
If preferences.publisher fires first but not the other, I want to fire. If state.$permissionStatus fires but not the other, I want to fire. I don't really want to CombineLatest, but not sure how to fire if either emit.
Is there a way to produce an even if either fire but more elegantly erase its values?
You're looking for Merge instead of CombineLatest. Your code for this would look a bit like the following:
var hasChangedPublisher: AnyPublisher<Void, Never> {
preferences.publisher
.merge(state.$permissionStatus)
.map({ _ in
return () // transform to Void
})
.eraseToAnyPublisher()
}
Instead of CombineLatest, use Merge.
CombineLatest creates a tuple based on all the publishers that are combined. It is great, except, it will not fire at all until every one of the combined publishers has fired at least once. After that, it will fire once for every firing of any of its combined publishers - (merging the last value from each publisher into the tuple).
Merge, instead, just multiplexes all combined publishers together and generates a stream of events - containing a stream of single values from any of the combined publishers.
// transform to Void
.map { _ in }

OnNext not being called on observable when using combineLatest and take

I'm trying to get a subscription to automatically unsubscribe when it emits an item. The base observable is created like this.
public static Observable<RxBleConnection> setupConnection(RxBleDevice device, PublishSubject<Void> disconnectTrigger) {
return device
.establishConnection(false)
.takeUntil(disconnectTrigger)
.retry(3)
.retryWhen(o -> o.delay(RETRY_DELAY, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS))
.compose(new ConnectionSharingAdapter());
}
Then I try to combine three read operations into a ProgramModel.
private void readCharacteristics(Action1<ProgramModel> onReadSuccess) {
mConnectionObservable
.flatMap(rxBleConnection ->
// combines the following three observables into a single observable that is
// emitted in onNext of the subscribe
Observable.combineLatest(
rxBleConnection.readCharacteristic(UUID_SERIAL_NUMBER),
rxBleConnection.readCharacteristic(UUID_MACHINE_TYPE),
rxBleConnection.readCharacteristic(UUID_CHARACTERISTIC),
ProgramModel::new))
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.take(1)
.subscribe(programModel -> {
programModel.trimSerial();
onReadSuccess.call(programModel);
}, BleUtil::logError);
}
So theoretically once a program model is comes through oNext of the subscribe, the subscription will be unsubscribed from. For some reason the operation gets stuck and onNext and onError are never called. If I remove the take(1) this works fine but I don't want to have to deal with holding onto a reference to the subscription and unsubscribing manually. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong or why onNext is not being called?
I needed to call take(1) before the flatMap as well as after. This post sort of explains it Read multiple characteristics from an Android device using library RxAndroidBle

can i conditionally "merge" a Single with an Observable?

i'm a RxJava newcomer, and i'm having some trouble wrapping my head around how to do the following.
i'm using Retrofit to invoke a network request that returns me a Single<Foo>, which is the type i ultimately want to consume via my Subscriber instance (call it SingleFooSubscriber)
Foo has an internal property items typed as List<String>.
if Foo.items is not empty, i would like to invoke separate, concurrent network requests for each of its values. (the actual results of these requests are inconsequential for SingleFooSubscriber as the results will be cached externally).
SingleFooSubscriber.onComplete() should be invoked only when Foo and all Foo.items have been fetched.
fetchFooCall
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
// Approach #1...
// the idea here would be to "merge" the results of both streams into a single
// reactive type, but i'm not sure how this would work given that the item emissions
// could be far greater than one. using zip here i don't think it would every
// complete.
.flatMap { foo ->
if(foo.items.isNotEmpty()) {
Observable.zip(
Observable.fromIterable(foo.items),
Observable.just(foo),
{ source1, source2 ->
// hmmmm...
}
).toSingle()
} else {
Single.just(foo)
}
}
// ...or Approach #2...
// i think this would result in the streams for Foo and items being handled sequentially,
// which is not really ideal because
// 1) i think it would entail nested streams (i get the feeling i should be using flatMap
// instead)
// 2) and i'm not sure SingleFooSubscriber.onComplete() would depend on the completion of
// the stream for items
.doOnSuccess { data ->
if(data.items.isNotEmpty()) {
// hmmmm...
}
}
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.subscribe(
{ data -> /* onSuccess() */ },
{ error -> /* onError() */ }
)
any thoughts on how to approach this would be greatly appreciated!
bonus points: in trying to come up with a solution to this, i've begun to question the decision to use the Single reactive type vs the Observable reactive type. most (all, except this one Foo.items case?) of my streams actually revolve around consuming a single instance of something, so i leaned toward Single to represent my streams as i thought it would add some semantic clarity around the code. anybody have any general guidance around when to use one vs the other?
You need to nest flatMaps and then convert back to Single:
retrofit.getMainObject()
.flatMap(v ->
Flowable.fromIterable(v.items)
.flatMap(w ->
retrofit.getItem(w.id).doOnNext(x -> w.property = x)
)
.ignoreElements()
.toSingle(v)
)

how do I use StartWith() rx operator but only if sequence is not empty?

I have a rx observable and I need to add one certain item but only if observable emit at least one item.
I went trough all the operators but couldn't find appropriate. The closest is StartWith but according to diagram it emits item immediately and does not take in count next items.
Is it possible to achieve this by combining it with some other operators ?
Thanks.
I have been trying to do the same and the only thing I came up with is not very reactive:
Observable.just(1, 2, 3)
.toList()
.flatMap(items -> {
if (items.size() > 0) {
items.add(0, 0);
}
return Observable.from(items);
})
It's far from perfect and will not work in case of "hot" observable.

Significance of Publish().RefCount() in this example?

I am in the process of learning RX and have run across a sample on the Intro to Rx site that I have a question about. Here is the example which implements the same functionality as the Window with count extension method:
public static IObservable<IObservable<T>> MyWindow<T>(
this IObservable<T> source,
int count)
{
var shared = source.Publish().RefCount();
var windowEdge = shared
.Select((i, idx) => idx % count)
.Where(mod => mod == 0)
.Publish()
.RefCount();
return shared.Window(windowEdge, _ => windowEdge);
}
I understand the purpose of the var shared = source.Publish().RefCount() line to 'share' the source with the window edge query. What I don't understand is why the windowEdge query was also defined with the .Publish().RefCount()? Can someone please help me understand why this would be necessary?
Good Question!
Long Answer
Aside from performance reasons, the reason windowEdge is ref-counted has to do with the use of Select.
In this example, Select is using the index argument (idx), who's value is determined uniquely for each new subscriber. Therefore, if we did not ref-count windowEdge, each new subscriber would receive an event upon the next item yielded, since mod == 0 will always be true.
This means without ref-counting that each window would consist of exactly two values (assuming no other race conditions are introduced). Example:
When the first event fires, we create a new window and feed in the event, at which point we also use the window-closing selector to obtain an observable which will yield when the window should close. The next event fires, and is sent to the current window. That event also happens to be the first event that is sent to our window-closing observable (because mod == 0 is always true). The window-closing observable has now fired, and the window is closed, leaving us with a window which contains exactly two elements. Repeat.
TLDR
The use of ref-count for windowEdge is necessary to ensure we're only incrementing idx once per "MyWindow" observable.