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Kostia Palchyk for RxJS

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RxJS Proxy: 3 new features

#rxjs #angular #webdev #frontend

amazing header photo by Zach Kadolph

Hi! 👋 In the previous post, I've introduced you to rxjs-proxify that turns your Observable into an Object of Observables:

const o = of({ msg: 'Hello' }, { msg: 'World' });
const p = proxify(o);
p.msg.subscribe(console.log); // > Hello > World
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Today I'll show you what new abilities you get with the recent 0.0.10 release: now proxify can be applied not only on Observables but also on Subjects and BehaviorSubjects. Also, we get a statify method that will help you manage the local state!

tl;dr try & install: github.com/kosich/rxjs-proxify

📖 Intro

Observables, Subjects, and BehaviorSubjects

Left to right: Observable, Subject, and BehaviorSubject. Cute photo by The Lucky Neko.

Observable Proxy (already familiar to you)
subscribe at any depth

const observable = proxify( of({ p: '🐑' }) );
observable.subscribe(console.log); // > { p: 🐑 }
observable.p.subscribe(console.log); // > 🐑
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It will be handy if you need to access many sub-properties on your streams:

// framework agnostic model
const { title, body } = proxify( fetchArticle() );
// framework agnostic view
<article>
  <Title value={ title } />
  <Body value={ body } />
</article>
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Note that here we're creating two separate Observables, so you'll probably want to .pipe( share() ) inside fetchArticle.

Subject Proxy
subscribe at any depth, push at the root

const subject = proxify(new Subject<{ p: string }>());
subject.subscribe(console.log);
subject.p.subscribe(console.log);
subject.next({ p: '🐥' }); // > { p: 🐥 } // > 🐥
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While you have all the benefits of Observable Proxy, you can also update the whole Subject value.

BehaviorSubject Proxy

subscribe at any depth, push at any depth, synchronously read the current state

const behavior = proxify(new BehaviorSubject({ p: '🐖' }));
behavior.p.subscribe(console.log); // > 🐖
behavior.p.next('🐇'); // > 🐇
console.log(behavior.p.value) // > 🐇
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In addition to Observable Proxy, you can synchronously read and update the state at any level!

// model
const s = proxify(
  new BehaviorSubject({ title: '', checked: false })
);
// view
<div>
  <input
    value={ s.title }
    onChange={ e => s.title.next(e.target.value) } />
  <input
    type="checkbox"
    checked={ s.checked }
    onChange={ e => s.checked.next(e.target.checked) } />
</div>
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State proxy

And we also export a statify function that creates a BehaviorSubject Proxy with a distinctUntilChanged on all its properties:

// create a state
const state = statify({ a: '🐰', z: '🏡' });

// listen to & log root state changes
state.subscribe(console.log); //> { a:🐰 z:🏡 }

// update particular substate
state.a.next('🐇'); //> { a:🐇 z:🏡 }
state.a.next('🐇'); //> same value, no update

// read current values
console.log(state.z.value + state.a.value); //> 🏡🐇

// update root state, still logging
state.next({ a: '🐇', z: '☁️' }) //> { a:🐇 z:☁️ }

// and then…
state.z.next('🌙');   //> { a:🐇  z:🌙 }
state.a.next('🐇👀'); //> { a:🐇👀 z:🌙 }
state.z.next('🛸')    //> { a:🐇👀 z:🛸 }
state.a.next('💨');   //> { a:💨  z:🛸 }
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That's it! Just a few words before you go:

🎉 Outro

You can try proxify online.

And you'll find more examples and the installation guide at github.com/kosich/rxjs-proxify. Hope you'll find these little tools useful!

If you enjoyed reading — please, indicate that with ❤️ 🦄 📘 buttons

Follow me here and on twitter for more RxJS, React, and JS posts!

Thank you for reading this article! Stay reactive and have a nice day 🙂

And thanks to @fkrasnowski for discussing with me and polishing this idea in the previous post comments!

Top comments (9)

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fkrasnowski profile image
Franciszek Krasnowski •

Great job!. This package is pure joy 🤩. I find it a good choice for prototyping due to smooth DX. Glad you thought about proxifying the .pipe method:

 // we should wrap piped observable into another proxy
return function () {
    const applied = Reflect.apply(builtIn, deepO, arguments);
    return coreProxy(applied);
};
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It's something I didn't think about for the first time

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kosich profile image
Kostia Palchyk • • Edited

Ah, I'm very glad you enjoyed this update, Franciszek!

Yeah, recursive proxying together with fn calls is crazy:

const a = of([1, 2, 3]);
const b = of([4, 5, 6]);
proxify(a)
  .reverse()
  .pipe( merge(b) )
  .reduce((a, c) => a + c, '')
  .subscribe(console.log);
// > 321
// > 456
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I bet it's not practical. Just 🤪

Also, a weird thing I've noticed: ideas just happen to naturally pop up while exploring. I'll share some rxjs-autorun tricks this week — so far, two features we just discovered, not intentionally invented! 🤯

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fkrasnowski profile image
Franciszek Krasnowski • • Edited

It's fun in a good way. A lot of libraries use Proxy. So it's not some crazy niche. For example I like the pipeline operator:

of('❤')
  |> mergeMap(heart => of( '🐒',  '🦆',  '🐋' )
     |> map(animal => heart + animal ))
  |> subscribe(console.log)
//❤🐒 
//❤🦆 
//❤🐋
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Not a big change but it's not standardized.
Should I hold my horses or go for it and show code like that to others?

Thread Thread
 
kosich profile image
Kostia Palchyk • • Edited

Pipeline looks promising 👍
I was so fascinated that added |> to my RxJS playground: thinkrx.io/rxjs/js-pipeline/ , but with a lot of warning signs ⚠️

I'm not sure that we can openly use it for teaching or openly speaking about RxJS, probably just among those who we know wouldn't be confused by it. In the near future, at least.

--

Btw, about combining strings, this came out of rxjs-autorun (not my idea):

 // should be async to capture all 3
const animals = of( '🐒',  '🦆',  '🐋' ).pipe(delay(1));
tracktag`❤ ${ animals }`
  .subscribe(console.log);
//❤🐒 
//❤🦆 
//❤🐋
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Basically, tracktag turns a template string into a computed expression from autorun.

Try it at stackblitz.com/edit/rxjs-autorun-t...

--

Which kinda automatically lead to HTML tags:

HTML tag combination

Try it at stackblitz.com/edit/rxjs-autorun-h...

--

Sorry for spamming you again with a million links. It's because you're among the few with whom I can share it 🤷‍♂️

Thread Thread
 
fkrasnowski profile image
Franciszek Krasnowski •

Sorry for not responding for soooooo long 🤡. Shame on me
I don't see much potential in the tracktag thing. I think we should take a broader perspective. I love computed and <$>.
Why? because it makes code terser and paradoxically more explicit. And it's not just my alienated opinion. Those ideas are already implemented in Svelte, which brings increasingly more attention last time.
Some Svelte with RxJs bits:

<script>
  import { timer } from 'rxjs'
  let tick = timer(0, 1000)
</script>

<h1>
    I see {$tick} 🐑
</h1>
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The $ prefix auto-subscribes and unsubscribes to Observable. You can also:

let animals = of( '🐒',  '🦆',  '🐋' ).pipe(
    concatMap(a => of(a).pipe(delay(1000))),
    startWith('?')
)
$: console.log(`❤ ${ $animals }`)
// The tracktag thing
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And the strong stuff:

<script>
    import { BehaviorSubject } from 'rxjs'

    let relationship = new BehaviorSubject({ giver: '👩‍🔬', taker: '🐸' })
</script>

<h1>
    The giver is {$relationship.giver || '?'} <br/>
  And the taker is {$relationship.taker || '?'}
</h1>

Giver <input bind:value={$relationship.giver} /><br />
Taker <input bind:value={$relationship.taker} />
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working demo here

I would like to see those ideas beyond Svelte on a more general/agnostic field. Therefore I am looking forward to your work on this topic

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t7yang profile image
t7yang • 
<input
  value={ s.title }
  onChange={ e => s.title.next(e.target.value) } />
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How possible to pass s.title directly into input value 🤔
I try this in codesandbox, it did throwing an error with invalid value prop value on <input> tag.

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kosich profile image
Kostia Palchyk • • Edited

Hey, t7yang! A totally valid question 😅

I wanted to show the idea w/o binding to any framework, so the code is somwehwat pseudocodish: some frameworks need adaptations for RxJS (regardless of whether we have a proxy or not)

I haven't studied how to adapt RxJS to other frameworks, but you got a general idea.

Please, ping me if you have any questions left
👋

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t7yang profile image
t7yang •

Got it. I am Angular developer, async pipe should work well with this.

ReckJS and <$> pretty interesting. I saw ReckJS before, cool 🥳

Thread Thread
 
kosich profile image
Kostia Palchyk •

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it 🙌

Ah, yeah, Angular is very powerful! And don't forget about the onPush change detection strategy! 🙂

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