Spring Reactive - reuse Mono value

Question

I have a sequence of Mono transformations using flatMap. I managed to simplify my production code to this test case:

@Test
public void test() {
    AtomicInteger iCounter = new AtomicInteger(1);
    Mono<String> iValueMono = Mono.fromSupplier(() -> {
        int iValue = iCounter.getAndIncrement();
        System.out.println("iValueMono CALL: " + iValue);
        return String.valueOf(iValue);
    });

    Mono<String> resultMono = Mono.just("X")
            .flatMap(append(iValueMono))
            .flatMap(append(iValueMono));

    StepVerifier.create(resultMono)
            .consumeNextWith(result -> assertThat(result).isEqualTo("X11"))
            .expectComplete()
            .verify();
}

private Function<String, Mono<String>> append(Mono<String> sMono) {
    return s -> sMono.map(v -> s + v);
}

This prints:

iValueMono CALL: 1
iValueMono CALL: 2

org.junit.ComparisonFailure: 
Expected :"X11"
Actual   :"X12"

I thought - I see now that it was incorrect - that each time I map the iValueMono in the append() call, the supplier is re-executed to produces a new value. I cannot change in the production code how the iValueMono is implemented (eg. to make it stateful to store the value). How can I implement this so that the value supplier is only called once and I get the final result "X11"?

Of course, I'm interested in a non-blocking, reactive way to do this.

Answer 1

Using Mono.cache() is the answer:

Turn this Mono into a hot source and cache last emitted signals for further Subscriber.

Using it:

Mono<String> iValueMono = Mono.fromSupplier(() -> {
    int iValue = iCounter.getAndIncrement();
    System.out.println("iValueMono CALL: " + iValue);
    return String.valueOf(iValue);
}).cache();

delivers the desired result of calling the supplier only once.