Observable

Open Event Organizer is an Android App for Organizers and Entry Managers. Its core feature is scanning a QR Code to validate Attendee Check In. Other features of the App are to display an overview of sales and tickets management. The App maintains a local database and syncs it with the Open Event API Server. The Data Access Layer in the App is designed such that the data is fetched from the server or taken from the local database according to the user’s need. For example, simply showing the event sales overview to the user will fetch the data from the locally saved database. But when the user wants to see the latest data then the App need to fetch the data from the server to show it to the user and also update the locally saved data for future reference. I will be talking about the data access layer in the Open Event Organizer App in this blog.

The App uses RxJava to perform all the background tasks. So all the data access methods in the app return the Observables which is then subscribed in the presenter to get the data items. So according to the data request, the App has to create the Observable which will either load the data from the locally saved database or fetch the data from the API server. For this, the App has AbstractObservableBuilder class. This class gets to decide which Observable to return on a data request.

Relevant Code:

final class AbstractObservableBuilder<T> {
   ...
   ...
   @NonNull
   private Callable<Observable<T>> getReloadCallable() {
       return () -> {
           if (reload)
               return Observable.empty();
           else
               return diskObservable
                   .doOnNext(item -> Timber.d("Loaded %s From Disk on Thread %s",
                       item.getClass(), Thread.currentThread().getName()));
       };
   }

   @NonNull
   private Observable<T> getConnectionObservable() {
       if (utilModel.isConnected())
           return networkObservable
               .doOnNext(item -> Timber.d("Loaded %s From Network on Thread %s",
                   item.getClass(), Thread.currentThread().getName()));
       else
           return Observable.error(new Throwable(Constants.NO_NETWORK));
   }

   @NonNull
   private <V> ObservableTransformer<V, V> applySchedulers() {
       return observable -> observable
           .subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
           .observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread());
   }

   @NonNull
   public Observable<T> build() {
       if (diskObservable == null || networkObservable == null)
           throw new IllegalStateException("Network or Disk observable not provided");

       return Observable
               .defer(getReloadCallable())
               .switchIfEmpty(getConnectionObservable())
               .compose(applySchedulers());
   }
}

The class is used to build the Abstract Observable which contains both types of Observables, making data request to the API server and the locally saved database. Take a look at the method build. Method getReloadCallable provides an observable which will be the default one to be subscribed which is a disk observable which means data is fetched from the locally saved database. The method checks parameter reload which if true suggests to make the data request to the API server or else to the locally saved database. If the reload is false which means data can be fetched from the locally saved database, getReloadCallable returns the disk observable and the data will be fetched from the locally saved database. If the reload is true which means data request must be made to the API server, then the method returns an empty observable.

The method getConnectionObservable returns a network observable which makes the data request to the API server. In the method build, switchIfEmpty operator is applied on the default observable which is empty if reload is true, and the network observable is passed to it. So when reload is true, network observable is subscribed and when it is false disk observable is subscribed. For example of usage of this class to make a events data request is:

public Observable<Event> getEvents(boolean reload) {
   Observable<Event> diskObservable = Observable.defer(() ->
       databaseRepository.getAllItems(Event.class)
   );

   Observable<Event> networkObservable = Observable.defer(() ->
       eventService.getEvents(JWTUtils.getIdentity(getAuthorization()))
           ...
           ...

   return new AbstractObservableBuilder<Event>(utilModel)
       .reload(reload)
       .withDiskObservable(diskObservable)
       .withNetworkObservable(networkObservable)
       .build();
}

So according to the boolean parameter reload, a correct observable is subscribed to complete the data request.

Links:
1. Documentation about the Operators in ReactiveX
2. Information about the Data Access Layer on Wikipedia