RxJava2 Flowable and Subscriber

Introduction#

This topic shows examples and documentation with regard to the reactive concepts of Flowable and Subscriber that were introduced in rxjava version2

Remarks#

the example needs rxjava2 as a dependency, the maven coordinates for the used version are:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>io.reactivex.rxjava2</groupId>
        <artifactId>rxjava</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.8</version>
    </dependency>

producer consumer example with backpressure support in the producer

The TestProducerfrom this example produces Integerobjects in a given range and pushes them to its Subscriber. It extends the Flowable<Integer> class. For a new subscriber, it creates a Subscription object whose request(long) method is used to create and publish the Integer values.

It is important for the Subscription that is passed to the subscriber that the request() method which calls onNext()on the subscriber can be recursively called from within this onNext() call. To prevent a stack overflow, the shown implementation uses the outStandingRequests counter and the isProducing flag.

class TestProducer extends Flowable<Integer> {
    static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(TestProducer.class);
    final int from, to;

    public TestProducer(int from, int to) {
        this.from = from;
        this.to = to;
    }

    @Override
    protected void subscribeActual(Subscriber<? super Integer> subscriber) {
        subscriber.onSubscribe(new Subscription() {

            /** the next value. */
            public int next = from;
            /** cancellation flag. */
            private volatile boolean cancelled = false;
            private volatile boolean isProducing = false;
            private AtomicLong outStandingRequests = new AtomicLong(0);

            @Override
            public void request(long n) {
                if (!cancelled) {

                    outStandingRequests.addAndGet(n);

                    // check if already fulfilling request to prevent call  between request() an subscriber .onNext()
                    if (isProducing) {
                        return;
                    }

                    // start producing
                    isProducing = true;

                    while (outStandingRequests.get() > 0) {
                        if (next > to) {
                            logger.info("producer finished");
                            subscriber.onComplete();
                            break;
                        }
                        subscriber.onNext(next++);
                        outStandingRequests.decrementAndGet();
                    }
                    isProducing = false;
                }
            }

            @Override
            public void cancel() {
                cancelled = true;
            }
        });
    }
}

The Consumer in this example extends DefaultSubscriber<Integer> and on start and after consuming an Integer requests the next one. On consuming the Integer values, there is a little delay, so the backpressure will be built up for the producer.

class TestConsumer extends DefaultSubscriber<Integer> {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(TestConsumer.class);

    @Override
    protected void onStart() {
        request(1);
    }

    @Override
    public void onNext(Integer i) {
        logger.info("consuming {}", i);
        if (0 == (i % 5)) {
            try {
                Thread.sleep(500);
            } catch (InterruptedException ignored) {
                // can be ignored, just used for pausing
            }
        }
        request(1);
    }

    @Override
    public void onError(Throwable throwable) {
        logger.error("error received", throwable);
    }

    @Override
    public void onComplete() {
        logger.info("consumer finished");
    }
}

in the following main method of a test class the producer and consumer are created and wired up:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
        final TestProducer testProducer = new TestProducer(1, 1_000);
        final TestConsumer testConsumer = new TestConsumer();

        testProducer
                .subscribeOn(Schedulers.computation())
                .observeOn(Schedulers.single())
                .blockingSubscribe(testConsumer);

    } catch (Throwable t) {
        t.printStackTrace();
    }
}

When running the example, the logfile shows that the consumer runs continuously, while the producer only gets active when the internal Flowable buffer of rxjava2 needs to be refilled.