Develop Reference

How to make network API calls on SliceProvider and set the information on Slice

I have been struggling on this question a few days. So what I want to do on Android Slices is create slice with information which is from the back-end service. For example:
on SliceProvider class
#Override
public Slice onBindSlice(Uri sliceUri) {
l.d(TAG,"onBindSlice called");
switch (sliceUri.getPath()) {
case "/product":
makeRequestForProduct();
return createProductSlice(sliceUri);
}
return null;
}
and
private void makeRequestForProduct() {
String url = Environment.getInstance().getCompleteUrl("etc..");
RetrofitFactory.defaultBuilder(ProductWebInterface.class)
.getProductResponse(url).enqueue(new ProductWebcallback());
}
public void onEventMainThread(ProductReceivedEvent response) {
if (response.getProduct() != null) { //do something
}
}
But I have no idea how to do it. Above code is not working. It is giving me an Exception.

According to Google Documentation here :
onBindSlice should return as quickly as possible so that the UI tied to this slice can be responsive. No network or other IO will be allowed during onBindSlice. Any loading that needs to be done should happen in the background with a call to ContentResolver.notifyChange(Uri, ContentObserver) when the app is ready to provide the complete data in onBindSlice.
You must therefore do your work in the background thread.
See an example below in Kotlin:
private fun makeRequestForProductInTheBackground(sliceUri : SliceUri) {
Completable.fromAction {
makeRequestForProduct(sliceUri)
}.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io()).subscribe()
}
After the request completes you can save your data somewhere e.g a variable or a repository.
fun onEventMainThread(response: ProductReceivedEvent) {
if (response.getProduct() != null) {
//Save your data in a variable or something depending on your needs
product == response.getProduct()
//This will call the *onBindSlice()* method again
context?.contentResolver?.notifyChange(sliceUri, null)
}
}
You can then use the product data in your createProductSlice(sliceUri) method

Executing rx.Obseravables secuentially

I'm developing an Android App using Fernando Ceja's clean architecture. One of my Interactors or Use Cases is in charge of getting the User's feed data. In order to get the data, first I have to retrieve the User's Teams from a database table and then I have to get the Feed list from the server-side.
This is how I get the Teams from the database layer:
mTeamCache.getAllTeams().subscribe(new DefaultSubscriber<List<SimpleTeam>>() {
#Override
public void onNext(List<SimpleTeam> simpleTeams) {
super.onNext(simpleTeams);
mTeams = simpleTeams;
}
});
TeamCache is basically just another Interactor that takes care of getting all the teams that I have in the database.
Here's how I get the Feed data from the server-side:
mFeedRepository.getFeed(0, 50).subscribe(new ServerSubscriber<List<ApiFeedResponse>>() {
#Override
protected void onServerSideError(Throwable errorResponse) {
callback.onFeedFetchFailed(...);
}
#Override
protected void onSuccess(List<ApiFeedResponse> responseBody) {
//Do stuff with mTeams
callback.onFeedFetched(...);
}
});
My GetFeedInteractor class has a method called execute, where I pass through the Callback that I'm later using in the UI to handle the response. The issue with all this is that currently I'm chaining the responses like this:
#Override
public void execute(final Callback callback, String userSipId) {
mTeamCache.getAllTeams().subscribe(new DefaultSubscriber<List<SimpleTeam>>() {
#Override
public void onNext(List<SimpleTeam> simpleTeams) {
super.onNext(simpleTeams);
mTeams = simpleTeams;
getFeedFromRepository(callback);
}
});
}
public void getFeedFromRepository(final Callback callback) {
mFeedRepository.getFeedRx(0, 50).subscribe(new ServerSubscriber<List<ApiFeedResponse>>() {
#Override
protected void onServerSideError(Throwable errorResponse) {
callback.onFeedFetchFailed("failed");
}
#Override
protected void onSuccess(List<ApiFeedResponse> responseBody) {
//Do stuff with mTeams
List<BaseFeedItem> responseList = new ArrayList();
for (ApiFeedResponse apiFeedResponse : responseBody) {
responseList.add(FeedDataMapper.transform(apiFeedResponse));
}
callback.onFeedFetched(responseList);
}
});
}
As you can see, once that I get the Team collection from the Cache Interactor I call the method that gets the feed from the very same Subscriber. I don't like this. I want to be able to do something nicer, like using Observable.concat(getTeamsFromCache(), getFeedFromRepository()); chain a call to another rx.Observable inside a Subscriber is not something nice to do. I guess that my question is, how can I chain two rx.Observables that are using different Subscribers?
Update:
ServerSubscriber is a subscriber that I implemted to subscribe to Retrofit services. It simply checks the error codes and some stuff. Here is:
https://gist.github.com/4gus71n/65dc94de4ca01fb221a079b68c0570b5
Default subscriber is an empty default subscriber. Here is:
https://gist.github.com/4gus71n/df501928fc5d24c2c6ed7740a6520330
TeamCache#getAllTeams() returns rx.Observable>
FeedRepository#getFeed(int page, int offset) returns rx.Observable>
Update 2:
This is how the Interactor to get the User's feed looks like now:
#Override
public void execute(final Callback callback, int offset, int pageSize) {
User user = mGetLoggedUser.get();
String userSipid = mUserSipid.get();
mFeedRepository.getFeed(offset, pageSize) //Get items from the server-side
.onErrorResumeNext(mFeedCache.getFeed(userSipid)) //If something goes wrong take it from cache
.mergeWith(mPendingPostCache.getAllPendingPostsAsFeedItems(user)) //Merge the response with the pending posts
.subscribe(new DefaultSubscriber<List<BaseFeedItem>>() {
#Override
public void onNext(List<BaseFeedItem> baseFeedItems) {
callback.onFeedFetched(baseFeedItems);
}
#Override
public void onError(Throwable e) {
if (e instanceof ServerSideException) {
//Handle the http error
} else if (e instanceof DBException) {
//Handle the database cache error
} else {
//Handle generic error
}
}
});
}

I think you're missing the point of RxJava and reactive approach, you should not have different subscribers with OO hierarchy, and callbacks.
You should construct separated Observables that should emit the specific data it's handle, without the Subscriber, then you can chain you're Observable as needed, and at the end, you have the subscriber that react to the final result expected from the chained Observable stream.
something like this (using lambdas to have more thin code):
TeamCache mTeamCache = new TeamCache();
FeedRepository mFeedRepository = new FeedRepository();
Observable.zip(teamsObservable, feedObservable, Pair::new)
.subscribe(resultPair -> {
//Do stuff with mTeams
List<BaseFeedItem> responseList = new ArrayList();
for (ApiFeedResponse apiFeedResponse : resultPair.second) {
responseList.add(FeedDataMapper.transform(apiFeedResponse));
}
}, throwable -> {
//handle errors
}
);
I've use zip and not concat as it's seems you have 2 independent calls here that you want to wait for both to finish ('zip' them together) and then act upon, but ofcourse, as you have separated Observables stream, you can chain them together differently according to your needs.
as for your ServerSubscriber with all the response validation logic, it should be rxify too, so you can compose it along your server Observable stream.
something like this (some logic emitted to simplify, and as I'm not familiar with it...)
Observable<List<SimpleTeam>> teamsObservable = mTeamCache.getAllTeams();
Observable<List<ApiFeedResponse>> feedObservable = mFeedRepository.getFeed(0, 50)
.flatMap(apiFeedsResponse -> {
if (apiFeedsResponse.code() != 200) {
if (apiFeedsResponse.code() == 304) {
List<ApiFeedResponse> body = apiFeedsResponse.body();
return Observable.just(body);
//onNotModified(o.body());
} else {
return Observable.error(new ServerSideErrorException(apiFeedsResponse));
}
} else {
//onServerSideResponse(o.body());
return Observable.just(apiFeedsResponse.body());
}
});

Android: infinite scroll with rx-java using repeatWhen, takeUntil and filter with retrofit

I am using Retrofit 2.2 with RxJava.
The pagination works like this: I get the first batch of data, I have to request the second batch of data with the same params except one which is the lastUpdated date and then if I get empty or the same batch of data it means there are no more items. I have found this great article https://medium.com/#v.danylo/server-polling-and-retrying-failed-operations-with-retrofit-and-rxjava-8bcc7e641a5a#.40aeibaja on how to do it. So my code is:
private Observable<Integer> syncDataPoints(final String baseUrl, final String apiKey,
final long surveyGroupId) {
final List<ApiDataPoint> lastBatch = new ArrayList<>();
Timber.d("start syncDataPoints");
return loadAndSave(baseUrl, apiKey, surveyGroupId, lastBatch)
.repeatWhen(new Func1<Observable<? extends Void>, Observable<?>>() {
#Override
public Observable<?> call(final Observable<? extends Void> observable) {
Timber.d("Calling repeatWhen");
return observable.delay(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
})
.takeUntil(new Func1<List<ApiDataPoint>, Boolean>() {
#Override
public Boolean call(List<ApiDataPoint> apiDataPoints) {
boolean done = apiDataPoints.isEmpty();
if (done) {
Timber.d("takeUntil : finished");
} else {
Timber.d("takeUntil : will query again");
}
return done;
}
})
.filter(new Func1<List<ApiDataPoint>, Boolean>() {
#Override
public Boolean call(List<ApiDataPoint> apiDataPoints) {
boolean unfiltered = apiDataPoints.isEmpty();
if (unfiltered) {
Timber.d("filtered");
} else {
Timber.d("not filtered");
}
return unfiltered;
}
}).map(new Func1<List<ApiDataPoint>, Integer>() {
#Override
public Integer call(List<ApiDataPoint> apiDataPoints) {
Timber.d("Finished polling server");
return 0;
}
});
}
private Observable<List<ApiDataPoint>> loadAndSave(final String baseUrl, final String apiKey,
final long surveyGroupId, final List<ApiDataPoint> lastBatch) {
return loadNewDataPoints(baseUrl, apiKey, surveyGroupId)
.concatMap(new Func1<ApiLocaleResult, Observable<List<ApiDataPoint>>>() {
#Override
public Observable<List<ApiDataPoint>> call(ApiLocaleResult apiLocaleResult) {
return saveToDataBase(apiLocaleResult, lastBatch);
}
});
}
private Observable<ApiLocaleResult> loadNewDataPoints(final String baseUrl, final String apiKey,
final long surveyGroupId) {
Timber.d("loadNewDataPoints");
return Observable.just(true).concatMap(new Func1<Object, Observable<ApiLocaleResult>>() {
#Override
public Observable<ApiLocaleResult> call(Object o) {
Timber.d("loadNewDataPoints call");
return restApi
.loadNewDataPoints(baseUrl, apiKey, surveyGroupId,
getSyncedTime(surveyGroupId));
}
});
}
As you can see the interesting method is loadNewDataPoints and I want it to be called until there are no more datapoints. As you can see Observable.just(true).concatMap is a hack because if I remove this concat map the restApi.loadNewDataPoints(....) does not get called although in the logs I can see that the api does get called but with the same old params and of course it returns the same results as the first time so syncing stops, saveToDataBase does get called fine. With my hack it works but I want to understand why it does not work the other way and also if there is a better way to do this. Thanks a lot!

So, I've written this kind of APIs (it's called Keyset Pagination) and implemented Rx clients against them.
This is one of the cases where BehaviorSubjects are useful:
S initialState = null;
BehaviorProcessor<T> subject = BehaviorProcessor.createDefault(initialState);
return subject
.flatMap(state -> getNextElements(state).singleOrError().toFlowable(), Pair::of, 1)
.serialize()
.flatMap(stateValuePair -> {
S state = stateValuePair.getLeft();
R retrievedValue = stateValuePair.getRight();
if(isEmpty(retrievedValue)) {
subject.onComplete();
return Flowable.empty();
} else {
subject.onNext(getNextState(state, retrievedValue));
return Flowable.just(retrievedValue);
}
}
.doOnUnsubscribe(subject::onCompleted)
.map(value -> ...)
Here
getNextElement performs the network call based on a state and returns a reactive stream with a single value
isEmpty determines whether the returned value is empty indicating end of elements
getNextState combines the passed-in state with the retrieved value to determine the next state for getNextElement.
It will work correctly if an error occurs (it will be propagated) and if you unsubscribe before the end (queries will get terminated).
Of course, in your specific case these don't need to be separate methods or complex types.

Long running RxJava Subscriptions with refreshable data

I'm looking to set up a long running data subscription to a particular data object in Android/RxJava. Specifically a combination of a Retrofit REST call paired with cached data. I've done this pretty simply just wrapping an API call with data, were the API call is Retrofit returning an Observable:
class OpenWeather {
...
Observable<CurrentWeather> OpenWeather.getLocalWeather()
...
}
The simple implementation would be:
public static Observable<CurrentWeather> getWeatherOnce() {
if (currentWeather != null)
return Observable.just(currentWeather);
return OpenWeather.getLocalWeather()
.map(weather -> currentWeather = weather);
}
private static CurrentWeather currentWeather;
The problem is that there is no way to notify when the "current weather" has been updated. The simplest way to add refreshable data with long running updates between subscriptions would be to use a BehaviorSubject like such:
public class DataModel {
public enum DataState {
ANY, // whatever is available, don't require absolute newest
LATEST, // needs to be the latest and anything new
}
private final static BehaviorSubject<CurrentWeather> currentWeatherSubject = BehaviorSubject.create();
public static Observable<CurrentWeather> getCurrentWeather(DataState state) {
synchronized (currentWeatherSubject) {
if (state == DataState.LATEST || currentWeatherSubject.getValue() == null) {
OpenWeather.getLocalWeather()
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.toSingle()
.subscribe(new SingleSubscriber<CurrentWeather>() {
#Override
public void onSuccess(CurrentWeather currentWeather) {
currentWeatherSubject.onNext(currentWeather);
}
#Override
public void onError(Throwable error) {
// ?? currentWeatherSubject.onError(error);
}
});
}
}
return currentWeatherSubject.asObservable();
}
}
Using the BehaviorSubject, when getting the current weather, get either the last cached entry and any updates as they occur. Thoughts?
So I'm sure I'm doing something wrong here as there seems there should be an easier way or more elegant way.

Handling API exceptions in RxJava

I'm trying to wrap my head around RxJava currently, but I'm having a little trouble with handling service call exceptions in an elegant manner.
Basically, I have a (Retrofit) service that returns an Observable<ServiceResponse>. ServiceResponse is defined like so:
public class ServiceResponse {
private int status;
private String message;
private JsonElement data;
public JsonElement getData() {
return data;
}
public int getStatus() {
return status;
}
public String getMessage() {
return message;
}
}
Now what I want is to map that generic response to a List<Account> contained within the data JsonElement field (I assume you don't care what the Account object looks like, so I won't pollute the post with it). The following code works really well for the success case, but I can't find a nice way to handle my API exceptions:
service.getAccounts()
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.map(new Func1<ServiceResponse, AccountData>() {
#Override
public AccountData call(ServiceResponse serviceResponse) {
// TODO: ick. fix this. there must be a better way...
ResponseTypes responseType = ResponseTypes.from(serviceResponse.getStatus());
switch (responseType) {
case SUCCESS:
Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().create();
return gson.fromJson(serviceResponse.getData(), AccountData.class);
case HOST_UNAVAILABLE:
throw new HostUnavailableException(serviceResponse.getMessage());
case SUSPENDED_USER:
throw new SuspendedUserException(serviceResponse.getMessage());
case SYSTEM_ERROR:
case UNKNOWN:
default:
throw new SystemErrorException(serviceResponse.getMessage());
}
}
})
.map(new Func1<AccountData, List<Account>>() {
#Override
public List<Account> call(AccountData accountData) {
Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().create();
List<Account> res = new ArrayList<Account>();
for (JsonElement account : accountData.getAccounts()) {
res.add(gson.fromJson(account, Account.class));
}
return res;
}
})
.subscribe(accountsRequest);
Is there a better way to do this? This does work, onError will fire to my observer, and I will receive the error that I threw, but it definitely does not seem like I'm doing this right.
Thanks in advance!
Edit:
Let me clarify exactly what I want to achieve:
I want to have a class that can be called from the UI (e.g. an Activity, or Fragment, or whatever). That class would take an Observer<List<Account>> as a parameter like so:
public Subscription loadAccounts(Observer<List<Account>> observer, boolean forceRefresh) {
...
}
That method would return a subscription that can be unsubscribed when the UI is detached/destroyed/etc.
The parameterized observer would handle onNext for the successful responses passing in a list of Accounts. OnError would handle any exceptions, but would also get passed any API exceptions (e.g. if the response status != 200 we would create a Throwable and pass it to onError). Ideally I don't want to just "throw" the Exception, I want to pass it directly to the Observer. That's what all the examples I see do.
The complication is that my Retrofit service returns a ServiceResponse object, so my observer cannot subscribe to that. The best I've come up with is to create an Observer wrapper around my Observer, like so:
#Singleton
public class AccountsDatabase {
private AccountsService service;
private List<Account> accountsCache = null;
private PublishSubject<ServiceResponse> accountsRequest = null;
#Inject
public AccountsDatabase(AccountsService service) {
this.service = service;
}
public Subscription loadAccounts(Observer<List<Account>> observer, boolean forceRefresh) {
ObserverWrapper observerWrapper = new ObserverWrapper(observer);
if (accountsCache != null) {
// We have a cached value. Emit it immediately.
observer.onNext(accountsCache);
}
if (accountsRequest != null) {
// There's an in-flight network request for this section already. Join it.
return accountsRequest.subscribe(observerWrapper);
}
if (accountsCache != null && !forceRefresh) {
// We had a cached value and don't want to force a refresh on the data. Just
// return an empty subscription
observer.onCompleted();
return Subscriptions.empty();
}
accountsRequest = PublishSubject.create();
accountsRequest.subscribe(new ObserverWrapper(new EndObserver<List<Account>>() {
#Override
public void onNext(List<Account> accounts) {
accountsCache = accounts;
}
#Override
public void onEnd() {
accountsRequest = null;
}
}));
Subscription subscription = accountsRequest.subscribe(observerWrapper);
service.getAccounts()
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.subscribe(accountsRequest);
return subscription;
}
static class ObserverWrapper implements Observer<ServiceResponse> {
private Observer<List<Account>> observer;
public ObserverWrapper(Observer<List<Account>> observer) {
this.observer = observer;
}
#Override
public void onCompleted() {
observer.onCompleted();
}
#Override
public void onError(Throwable e) {
observer.onError(e);
}
#Override
public void onNext(ServiceResponse serviceResponse) {
ResponseTypes responseType = ResponseTypes.from(serviceResponse.getStatus());
switch (responseType) {
case SUCCESS:
Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().create();
AccountData accountData = gson.fromJson(serviceResponse.getData(), AccountData.class);
List<Account> res = new ArrayList<>();
for (JsonElement account : accountData.getAccounts()) {
res.add(gson.fromJson(account, Account.class));
}
observer.onNext(res);
observer.onCompleted();
break;
default:
observer.onError(new ApiException(serviceResponse.getMessage(), responseType));
break;
}
}
}
}
I still feel like I am not using this correctly though. I definitely haven't seen anyone else using an ObserverWrapper before. Perhaps I shouldn't be using RxJava, though the guys at SoundCloud and Netflix really sold me on it in their presentations and I'm pretty eager to learn it.

Please read below I've added an edit.
It's perfectly correct to throw within an Action/Func/Observer with RxJava. The exception will be propagate by the framework right down to your Observer.
If you limit yourself to calling onError only then you'll be twisting yourself to make that happen.
With that being said a suggestion would be to simply remove this wrapper and add a simple validation
Action within the service.getAccount... chain of Observables.
I'd use the doOnNext(new ValidateServiceResponseOrThrow) chained with a map(new MapValidResponseToAccountList). Those are simple classes which implements the necessary code to keep the Observable chain a bit more readable.
Here's your loadAccount method simplified using what I suggested.
public Subscription loadAccounts(Observer<List<Account>> observer, boolean forceRefresh) {
if (accountsCache != null) {
// We have a cached value. Emit it immediately.
observer.onNext(accountsCache);
}
if (accountsRequest != null) {
// There's an in-flight network request for this section already. Join it.
return accountsRequest.subscribe(observer);
}
if (accountsCache != null && !forceRefresh) {
// We had a cached value and don't want to force a refresh on the data. Just
// return an empty subscription
observer.onCompleted();
return Subscriptions.empty();
}
accountsRequest = PublishSubject.create();
accountsRequest.subscribe(new EndObserver<List<Account>>() {
#Override
public void onNext(List<Account> accounts) {
accountsCache = accounts;
}
#Override
public void onEnd() {
accountsRequest = null;
}
});
Subscription subscription = accountsRequest.subscribe(observer);
service.getAccounts()
.doOnNext(new ValidateServiceResponseOrThrow())
.map(new MapValidResponseToAccountList())
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.subscribe(accountsRequest);
return subscription;
}
private static class ValidateResponseOrThrow implements Action1<ServiceResponse> {
#Override
public void call(ServiceResponse response) {
ResponseTypes responseType = ResponseTypes.from(serviceResponse.getStatus());
if (responseType != SUCCESS)
throw new ApiException(serviceResponse.getMessage(), responseType));
}
}
private static class MapValidResponseToAccountList implements Func1<ServiceResponse, List<Account>> {
#Override
public Message call(ServiceResponse response) {
// add code here to map the ServiceResponse into the List<Accounts> as you've provided already
}
}
Edit:
Unless someone says otherwise I think it's best practice to return errors using flatMap.
I've thrown Exceptions from Action in the past but I don't believe it's the recommended way.
You'll have a cleaner Exception stack if you use flatMap. If you throw from inside an Action the Exception stack
will actually contain rx.exceptions.OnErrorThrowable$OnNextValue Exception which isn't ideal.
Let me demonstrate the example above using the flatMap instead.
private static class ValidateServiceResponse implements rx.functions.Func1<ServiceResponse, Observable<ServiceResponse>> {
#Override
public Observable<ServiceResponse> call(ServiceResponse response) {
ResponseTypes responseType = ResponseTypes.from(serviceResponse.getStatus());
if (responseType != SUCCESS)
return Observable.error(new ApiException(serviceResponse.getMessage(), responseType));
return Observable.just(response);
}
}
service.getAccounts()
.flatMap(new ValidateServiceResponse())
.map(new MapValidResponseToAccountList())
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
.subscribe(accountsRequest);
As you can see the the difference is subtle. The ValidateServiceResponse now implements the Func1 instead of Action1 and we're no longer using the throw keyword. We use Observable.error(new Throwable) instead. I believe this fits better with the expected Rx contract.

You could read this good article about error handling http://blog.danlew.net/2015/12/08/error-handling-in-rxjava/