Phantom Operators
These operators have been proposed but are not part of the anticipated 1.0 release of RxJava.
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chunkify( )— returns an iterable that periodically returns a list of items emitted by the source Observable since the last list -
fromFuture( )— convert a Future into an Observable, but do not attempt to get the Future's value until a Subscriber subscribes -
forEachFuture( )— create a futureTask that will invoke a specified function on each item emitted by an Observable -
forIterable( )— apply a function to the elements of an Iterable to create Observables which are then concatenated -
fromCancellableFuture( ),startCancellableFuture( ), anddeferCancellableFuture( )— versions of Future-to-Observable converters that monitor the subscription status of the Observable to determine whether to halt work on the Future -
generate( )andgenerateAbsoluteTime( )— create an Observable that emits a sequence of items as generated by a function of your choosing
returns an iterable that periodically returns a list of items emitted by the source Observable since the last list
The chunkify( ) operator represents a blocking observable as an Iterable, that, each time you iterate over it, returns a list of items emitted by the source Observable since the previous iteration. These lists may be empty if there have been no such items emitted.
convert a Future into an Observable, but do not attempt to get the Future's value until a Subscriber subscribes
The fromFuture( ) method also converts a Future into an Observable, but it obtains this Future indirectly, by means of a function you provide. It creates the Observable immediately, but waits to call the function and to obtain the Future until a Subscriber subscribes to it.
The forEachFuture( ) returns a FutureTask for each item emitted by the source Observable (or each item and each notification) that, when executed, will apply a function you specify to each such item (or item and notification).
forIterable( ) is similar to from(Iterable ) but instead of the resulting Observable emitting the elements of the Iterable as its own emitted items, it applies a specified function to each of these elements to generate one Observable per element, and then concatenates the emissions of these Observables to be its own sequence of emitted items.
versions of Future-to-Observable converters that monitor the subscription status of the Observable to determine whether to halt work on the Future
If the a subscriber to the Observable that results when a Future is converted to an Observable later unsubscribes from that Observable, it can be useful to have the ability to stop attempting to retrieve items from the Future. The "cancellable" Future enables you do do this. These three methods will return Observables that, when unsubscribed to, will also "unsubscribe" from the underlying Futures.
The basic form of generate( ) takes four parameters. These are initialState and three functions: iterate( ), condition( ), and resultSelector( ). generate( ) uses these four parameters to generate an Observable sequence, which is its return value. It does so in the following way.
generate( ) creates each emission from the sequence by applying the resultSelector( ) function to the current state and emitting the resulting item. The first state, which determines the first emitted item, is initialState. generate( ) determines each subsequent state by applying iterate( ) to the current state. Before emitting an item, generate( ) tests the result of condition( ) applied to the current state. If the result of this test is false, instead of calling resultSelector( ) and emitting the resulting value, generate( ) terminates the sequence and stops iterating the state.
There are also versions of generate( ) that allow you to do the work of generating the sequence on a particular Scheduler and that allow you to set the time interval between emissions by applying a function to the current state. The generateAbsoluteTime( ) allows you to control the time at which an item is emitted by applying a function to the state to get an absolute system clock time (rather than an interval from the previous emission).
