Rxjava2, zipped iterable and interval, executes only a single mapped observable - rx-java2

Question

I have this the following scenario I need to achieve:
perform each network call for a list of request object with 1 second delay each
and I have this following implementation using rxjava2
emit an interval stream
emit an iterable stream
zip them to emit each item from the iterable source
which by far has no problem and I fully understand how it works, now I integrated the above to the following
map each item emitted from zip into a new observable that defer/postpone an observable source for a network call
each mapped-emitted observable will perform an individual network call for each request
which I ended up with the following code
Observable
.zip(Observable.interval(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS), Observable.fromIterable(iterableRequests), new BiFunction<Long, RequestInput, RequestResult>() {
#Override
public RequestResult apply(#NonNull Long aLong, #NonNull final RequestInput request) throws Exception {
return request;
}
})
.map(new Function<RequestResult, ObservableSource<?>>() {
#Override
public ObservableSource<?> apply(#NonNull RequestResult requestResult) throws Exception {
// map each requestResult into this observable and perform a new stream
return Observable
.defer(new Callable<ObservableSource<?>>() {
// return a postponed observable for each subscriber
})
.retryWhen(new Function<Observable<Throwable>, ObservableSource<?>>() {
// return throwable observable
})
}
})
.subscribe(new Observer<ObservableSource<?>>() {
//.. onSubscribe {}
//.. onError {}
//.. onComplete {}
#Override
public void onNext(ObservableSource<?> observableSource) {
// actual subscription for each of the Observable.defer inside
// so it will start to emit and perform the necessary operation
}
});
but the problem is, it executes the Observable.defer source, only ONCE, but keeps on iterating(by putting a Log inside the map operator to see the iteration).
Can anyone guide me please on how can I achieve what I want, I exhausted alot of papers, drawing alot of marble diagrams, just to see where Im at on my code,
I dont know if the diagram I created illustrate the thing that I want, if it does, I dont know why does the sample code dont perform as the diagram portraits
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The first part is fine, but the map thingy is a bit unneeded, what you are doing is mapping each RequestResult to an Observable, and then manually subscribe to it at the Observer.onNext(), actually the defer is not necessary as you're creating separate Observable for each RequestResult with different data, defer will occur at each subscribe yoy do at onNext(), and the map occur as you observed for each emission of the zipped RequestResult.
what you probably need is simple flatMap() to map each RequestResult value to a separate Observable that will do the network request, and it will merge back the result for each request to the stream, so you'll just need to handle the final values emission for each request instead to subscribe manually to each Observable.
Just keep in mind that order might be lost, in case some requests might take longer than your delay between them.
Observable.zip(Observable.interval(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS), Observable.fromIterable(iterableRequests),
new BiFunction<Long, RequestInput, RequestResult>() {
#Override
public RequestResult apply(#NonNull Long aLong,
#NonNull final RequestInput request) throws Exception {
return request;
}
})
.flatMap(new Function<RequestResult, ObservableSource<?>>() {
#Override
public ObservableSource<?> apply(RequestResult requestResult) throws Exception {
return createObservableFromRequest(requestResult)
.retryWhen(new Function<Observable<Throwable>, ObservableSource<?>>() {
// return throwable observable
})
}
})
.subscribe(new Observer<ObservableSource<?>>() {
//.. onSubscribe {}
//.. onError {}
//.. onComplete {}
#Override
public void onNext(ObservableSource<?> observableSource) {
//do something with each network result request emission
}
});

Answer 2

I manage to make it work, as somewhere inside the Observable.defer, my retrofitclient was null,
retrofitClient.getApiURL().post(request); // client was null
my retrofitClient was null ( i looked somewhere in the code and I noticed i was not initialized, and I initialized it properly and made it work)
now can anybody tell me why Rx didnt throw an exception back to the original observable stream? theres no NullPointerException that occurred, Im confused