[RxJS + AngularJS] Sync Requests with RxJS and Angular
When you implement a search bar, the user can make several different queries in a row. With a Promise based implementation, the displayed result would be what the longest promise returns. This is the problem which we want to solve.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="https://cdn.rawgit.com/lodash/lodash/3.0.1/lodash.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/less.js/1.3.3/less.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/rxjs/2.3.22/rx.all.js"></script>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.4.0/angular.min.js"></script>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>JS Bin</title>
</head>
<body ng-app="APP">
<div>
<p>Click on "Pets" then on "Nothing" in each form</p>
<p>Because pets' promise take long to resolve (longer than nothing's), it ends up with inconsistent output in Basic setup: nothing should be displayed but pets arrive!</p>
<p>RxJs is an elegant way to prevent this concurrency problems from appearing.</p>
</div>
<div ng-controller="StandardController as standard" >
<p>Basic setup</p>
<input name="standardEntityType" type="radio" ng-model="standard.filters.entityType" value="pets">
<label for="s-pets">Pets</label>
<input name="standardEntityType" type="radio" ng-model="standard.filters.entityType" value="colors">
<label for="s-colors">Colors</label>
<input name="standardEntityType" type="radio" ng-model="standard.filters.entityType" value="nothing">
<label for="s-nothing">Nothing</label>
<p>
{{ standard.filters | json }}
</p>
<ul>
<li ng-repeat="entity in standard.entities">
{{ entity.name }}
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</body>
</html>console.clear();
angular.module('APP', [])
.service('dataService', function($q, $timeout, $rootScope){
var colors = [
{ name: 'red' },
{ name: 'blue' },
{ name: 'white' }
];
var pets = [
{ name: 'cat' },
{ name: 'dog' }
];
function fakeAjax(returnValue, delay){
return $q(function(resolve){
$timeout(function() {
resolve(returnValue);
}, delay);
});
}
function getColors(){
return fakeAjax(colors, 1500);
}
function getPets(){
return fakeAjax(pets, 3000);
}
function nullResponse(){
return fakeAjax([], 1);
}
var mapping = {
colors: getColors,
pets: getPets
};
return {
getEntities: function(type){
if (mapping[type])
return mapping[type]();
else
return nullResponse();
}
};
})
.controller('StandardController', function($scope, dataService){
this.entities = [];
this.filters = {};
var controller = this;
function searchEntities(type){
dataService.getEntities(type)
.then(function(entities){
controller.entities = entities;
});
}
$scope.$watch(function(){
return controller.filters.entityType;
}, function(newVal){
searchEntities(newVal);
});
});Solution 1: Add lodash _.debounce method to add some delay.
.controller('StandardController', function($scope, dataService){
this.entities = [];
this.filters = {};
var controller = this;
function _searchEntities(type){
dataService.getEntities(type)
.then(function(entities){
controller.entities = entities;
});
}
var searchEntities = _.debounce(_searchEntities, 1500);
$scope.$watch(function(){
return controller.filters.entityType;
}, function(newVal){
searchEntities(newVal);
});
});The problem here is we have to assume a correct time. Too long, and the UI is not responsible enough, and too short, and we may encounter weirdness again.
Solution 2: Using RxJS
.controller('StandardController', function($scope, dataService){
this.entities = [];
this.filters = {};
var controller = this;
var Observable = Rx.Observable;
var source = Observable.create(function(observe){
$scope.$watch(function(){
return controller.filters.entityType;
}, function(newType){
observe.onNext(newType);
});
}).flatMapLatest(function(type){
return Observable.fromPromise(dataService.getEntities(type));
});
var sub = source.subscribe(function(entities){
controller.entities = entities;
});
});No matter what order we click the radio buttons, we'll always get the expected outcome. RxJS will handle that for us. The main benefit of RxJS over mere promises is we always get the latest query results. You can see, this implementation of Rx has a way to cancel promises.
Two methos to apply:
.controller('StandardController', function($scope, dataService){
this.entities = [];
this.filters = {};
var controller = this;
var Observable = Rx.Observable;
var source = Observable.create(function(observe){
$scope.$watch(function(){
return controller.filters.entityType;
}, function(newType){
observe.onNext(newType);
});
}).debounce(500).flatMapLatest(function(type){
return Observable.fromPromise(dataService.getEntities(type));
});
var sub = source.subscribe(function(entities){
controller.entities = entities;
});
$scope.$on('destory', function(){
sub.dispose();
});
});The first thing is to clean after yourself. On each destroy event on the scope, so basically, whenever you use a router, it could be on route change, you have to dispose the listener so Rx knows it can get rid of everything linked to it.
The second thing is we don't want to put too much pressure on our server, so we are going to use debounce again. It's very important to understand here that debounce is not a way to avoid UI issues. It's a way to avoid useless server queries.