@kayahr/observable

Observable

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A simple Observable implementation written in TypeScript and complying to the TC39 Observable Tests.

The library is very small (around 3KB when minified) and only depends on the symbol-observable polyfill.

Usage

Install the library as a dependency in your project:

npm install @kayahr/observable

And then use it like this:

import { Observable } from "@kayahr/observable";

const observable = new Observable<Date>(subscriber => {
    // Send current time each second
    const interval = setInterval(() => subscriber.next(new Date()), 1000);

    // Stop interval when unsubscribed
    return () => clearInterval(interval);
});

observable.subscribe(date => console.log(date));

See TC39 Observable Proposal for details.

SharedObservable

While a standard Observable is unicast, in a lot of situations a multicast Observable is preferable. This library provides a specialized SharedObservable class for exactly this case. A shared observable is initialized on first subscribe and cleaned up on last unsubscribe. Beside of this there is no difference to the standard Observable.

Helper functions

The isSubscribable type-guard function can be used to check if a given value is an object providing a subscribe method:

import { isSubscribable } from "@kayahr/observable";

if (isSubscribable(something)) {
    something.subscribe(console.log);
}

There is also an isUnsubscribable type-guard function to check if given value is an object providing an unsubscribe method:

import { isUnsubscribable } from "@kayahr/observable";

if (isUnsubscribable(something)) {
    something.unsubscribe();
}

RxJS compatibility

RxJS' Observable implementation is not standard-conform, especially because it uses a pipe method which is not part of the proposed standard. RxJS unfortunately also does not use a polyfill for Symbol.observable, it just assumes that one is present or otherwise it falls back on using a non-standard "@@observable" string instead. To ensure compatibility between RxJS and any other observable implementation make sure to load a Symbol.observable polyfill like symbol-observable before importing RxJS:

import "symbol-observable";

In order to use Observable instances of this library in RxJS pipes you have to convert the observable with RxJS' from function:

import { from } from "rxjs";
import { Observable } from "@kayahr/observable";

const observable = new Observable(...);
const rxjsObservable = from(observable);
rxjsObservable.pipe(...);

Vice-versa you can use the static Observable.from method to convert an RxJS Observable if needed:

import { Subject } from "rxjs";
import { Observable } from "@kayahr/observable";

const subject = new Subject<number>();
const observable = Observable.from(subject);

But this should never be necessary as long as you use the Subscribable interface instead of a specific Observable type in your code, which is compatible to both Observable implementations:

import { Subscribable } from "@kayahr/observable";

function foo(subscribable: Subscribable<number>): void {
    subscribable.subscribe(v => console.log(v));
}