I'm having a problem that I'm sure is entirely based on my (lack of) a plete understanding of Observables.

This is an Angular2 (v4.0.3) project using rx/js and Observables.

I have a state store that holds events in a state service:

  // Observable string sources
  private currentEventStore = new BehaviorSubject<string>("");

  // Observable string streams
  public currentEvent$ = this.currentEventStore.asObservable();

  // Service message mands
  setCurrentEvent(nextEvent: string) {
    this.currentEventStore.next(nextEvent);
  }

I subscribe to currentEvent$ in my ponents to listen for events, and then act on them.

this.stateSvc.currentEvent$
  .subscribe(
  currentEvent => {
    this.currentEvent = currentEvent;
    if (currentEvent != '') {
      this.handleCurrentEvent(currentEvent);
    }
  });

The problem I'm having is that the store is accumulating all events and returning all of them each time, so that when I spawn a 'create' event, my subscribed function picks up the event and creates a record - perfect on the first pass, but if I spawn a second 'create' event, my subscribed function picks up 2 events, and creates 2 records, and on the next 'create' event it creates 3 records, and so on.

What I need to happen is for the event to be flushed out of the stream so that the currentEvent$ store only holds events that haven't been addressed.

Is there a way to flush the store? Or is there something I'm missing here in my expectations and implementation?

I'm having a problem that I'm sure is entirely based on my (lack of) a plete understanding of Observables.

This is an Angular2 (v4.0.3) project using rx/js and Observables.

I have a state store that holds events in a state service:

  // Observable string sources
  private currentEventStore = new BehaviorSubject<string>("");

  // Observable string streams
  public currentEvent$ = this.currentEventStore.asObservable();

  // Service message mands
  setCurrentEvent(nextEvent: string) {
    this.currentEventStore.next(nextEvent);
  }

I subscribe to currentEvent$ in my ponents to listen for events, and then act on them.

this.stateSvc.currentEvent$
  .subscribe(
  currentEvent => {
    this.currentEvent = currentEvent;
    if (currentEvent != '') {
      this.handleCurrentEvent(currentEvent);
    }
  });

The problem I'm having is that the store is accumulating all events and returning all of them each time, so that when I spawn a 'create' event, my subscribed function picks up the event and creates a record - perfect on the first pass, but if I spawn a second 'create' event, my subscribed function picks up 2 events, and creates 2 records, and on the next 'create' event it creates 3 records, and so on.

What I need to happen is for the event to be flushed out of the stream so that the currentEvent$ store only holds events that haven't been addressed.

Is there a way to flush the store? Or is there something I'm missing here in my expectations and implementation?

• javascript
• angularjs
• events
• rxjs
• angular2-observables

Share Improve this question Follow asked May 16, 2017 at 18:52 Stephen R. SmithStephen R. Smith 3,41011 gold badge2828 silver badges4646 bronze badges 1

• 2 The only thing BehaviorSubject does is that it has a default value that is sent on subscription to each observer (that's what ReplaySubject does.). It doesn't store values going through so the problem is somewhere else and not in using BehaviorSubject. – martin Commented May 16, 2017 at 19:22

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 4

As is often the case, after days of banging my head against a problem, within hours of posting a question I work out the answer.

The issue here is that every time I revisit the ponent that registers the subscriber, it adds a new subscriber to the observable, so that on the second visit, there are two subscribers, and each fires, resulting in the event being handled twice. Come back a third time, and there are now three subscribers, so the event gets handled three times.

What I need to do is modify my subscriptions so that they are assigned to a variable, and then when destroying the ponent, I unsubscribe.

So the subscribe should look like this (note the addition of 'this.observeEvent =':

this.observeEvent = this.stateSvc.currentEvent$
  .subscribe(
  currentEvent => {
    this.currentEvent = currentEvent;
    if (currentEvent != '') {
      this.handleCurrentEvent(currentEvent);
    }
  });

And I add this to the ponent:

ngOnDestroy() {
  this.observeEvent.unsubscribe();
}

Which unregistered the subscriber so they don't accumulate each time this ponent loads.

I had tried to figure out how to acplish this earlier, but without assigning the Observable to an instance variable, I couldn't find any valid syntax to unsubscribe in the ngOnDestroy method.