Realm access from incorrect thread Exception while a copy was sent using copyFromRealm

Question

When streaming copy of realm objects instead of realm reference and observing it on Schedulers.IO thread, there is a crash with the famous exception message "Realm access from incorrect thread. Realm objects can only be accessed in the thread they were created."

Shouldn't the copy be thread free? Can I produce it from one thread and process it on a different thread?

This is how I am creating observable.

 public Observable<Brand> getAllBrands() {
    return realm.where(Brand.class)
            .findAll()
            .asObservable()
            .flatMap(Observable::from)
            .map(brand -> realm.copyFromRealm(brand));
}

Following is how I observe getAllBrands().

 Observable<Brand> brandObservable = dataManager.getAllBrands();

    brandObservable.observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
            .subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
            .subscribe(new Observer<Brand>() {
                @Override
                public void onCompleted() {
                    Log.d("reactive", "completed");
                }

                @Override
                public void onError(Throwable e) {
                    Log.d("reactive", e.getMessage());
                }

                @Override
                public void onNext(Brand brand) {
                    dataSource.add(brand.getName());
                    myAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
                }
            });

Answer 1

You are subscribing on schedulers.io while using the Realm instance from the UI thread:

realm.where(Brand.class)
        .findAll()
        .asObservable()
        .flatMap(Observable::from)
        .map(brand -> realm.copyFromRealm(brand)) // realm instance on the wrong thread
        .subscribeOn(schedulers.io());            

What are you after is an easy way to move a query across threads, which is still work-in-progress here: https://github.com/realm/realm-java/pull/1978. Until then you can work around it by doing it yourself like this:

public Observable<Brand> getAllBrands(final Realm realm) {
    return Observable.create(new Observable.OnSubscribe<List<Brand>>() {
        @Override
        public void call(final Subscriber<? super List<Brand>> subscriber) {
            Realm obsRealm = Realm.getInstance(realm.getConfiguration());
            final RealmResults<Brand> results = obsRealm.where(Brand.class).findAll();
            final RealmChangeListener listener = new RealmChangeListener() {
                @Override
                public void onChange() {
                    subscriber.onNext(realm.copyFromRealm(results));
                }
            };
            results.addChangeListener(listener);
            subscriber.add(Subscriptions.create(new Action0() {
                @Override
                public void call() {
                    realm.removeChangeListener(listener);
                    realm.close();
                }
            }));

        }
    })
    .flatMap(Observable::from);
}

Note that Realm Changelisteners only work on Looper threads which means you probably need to change your worker thread to a H

HandlerThread bgThread = new HandlerThread("workerThread");
Handler handler = new Handler(bgThread.getLooper());

getAllBrands(realm).subscribeOn(HandlerScheduler.from(handler));