Angular 2 Observable with multiple subscribers

Solution 1:

I encountered a similar problem and solved it using Aran's suggestion to reference Cory Rylan's Angular 2 Observable Data Services blog post. The key for me was using BehaviorSubject. Here's the snippets of the code that ultimately worked for me.

The data service creates an internal BehaviorSubject to cache the data once when the service is initialized. Consumers use the subscribeToDataService() method to access the data.

    import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
    import { Http, Response } from '@angular/http';

    import { BehaviorSubject } from 'rxjs/BehaviorSubject';
    import { Observable } from 'rxjs/Observable';

    import { Data } from './data';
    import { properties } from '../../properties';

    @Injectable()
    export class DataService {
      allData: Data[] = new Array<Data>();
      allData$: BehaviorSubject<Data[]>;

      constructor(private http: Http) {
        this.initializeDataService();
      }

      initializeDataService() {
        if (!this.allData$) {
          this.allData$ = <BehaviorSubject<Data[]>> new BehaviorSubject(new Array<Data>());

          this.http.get(properties.DATA_API)
            .map(this.extractData)
            .catch(this.handleError)
            .subscribe(
              allData => {
                this.allData = allData;
                this.allData$.next(allData);
              },
              error => console.log("Error subscribing to DataService: " + error)
            );
        }
      }

      subscribeToDataService(): Observable<Data[]> {
        return this.allData$.asObservable();
      }

      // other methods have been omitted

    }

Components can subscribe to the data service upon initialization.

    export class TestComponent implements OnInit {
      allData$: Observable<Data[]>;

      constructor(private dataService: DataService) {
      }

      ngOnInit() {
        this.allData$ = this.dataService.subscribeToDataService();
      }

    }

The template can then iterate over the observable as necessary using the async pipe.

    *ngFor="let data of allData$ | async" 

Subscribers are updated each time the next() method is called on the BehaviorSubject in the data service.

Solution 2:

The issue that you have in your code is that you are returning a new observable each time your function is called. This is because http.get is creating a new Observable each time it is called. The way to solve this could be to store the observable (via closure) in the service which will ensure that all of the subjects are subscribing to the same observable. This isn't perfect code, but I had a similar issue and this solved my problem for the time being.

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { Http, Response } from '@angular/http';

import {Observable} from 'rxjs/Rx';

// Import RxJs required methods
import 'rxjs/add/operator/map';
import 'rxjs/add/operator/catch';

import { StationCompliance } from './model/StationCompliance';


@Injectable()
export class StationComplianceService {

  private url = '/api/read/stations';

  constructor(private http : Http) {
    console.log('Started Station compliance service');
   }

   private stationComplianceObservable: Rx.Observable<StationCompliance[]>;


   getStationCompliance() : Observable<StationCompliance []> {

    if(this.stationComplianceObservable){
        return this.stationComplianceObservable;
    }        

      this.stationComplianceObservable = this.http.get(this.url)
      .debounce(1000)
      .share()
      .map((res:Response) => res.json())
      .finally(function () { this.stationComplianceObservable = null}) 
      .catch((error:any) => Observable.throw(error.json().error || 'Server Error'));

    return this.stationComplianceObservable;
   }
}

Solution 3:

shareReplay should do it now - "(...) valuable in situations where you know you will have late subscribers to a stream that need access to previously emitted values."

Solution 4:

you can create a reactive data service and define a local Observable variable which is updated internally and subscribers can update themselves. this article explains it properly data services