What are RxJS Subject's and the benefits of using them?

Question

I found the rxJS docs define them as

What is a Subject? An RxJS Subject is a special type of Observable that allows values to be multicasted to many Observers. While plain Observables are unicast (each subscribed Observer owns an independent execution of the Observable), Subjects are multicast.

and it goes on to give examples but I'm looking for a basic ELI5 explanation. From my understanding is it helps handle and define items in a sequence. Is that correct?

I think it would be most helpful to me and others to see a simple function with and without defining an rxJS Subject to understand why it's important?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The easiest way to understand it is to think of a Subject as both a producer and a consumer. It's like an open channel where someone can send a message on one end, and any subscribers will receive it on the other end.

                                  +---------------
Sender                            | =>  =>  =>  =>  Subscriber
           -----------------------+   +----------- 
Message =>  =>  =>  =>  =>  =>  =>  =>  =>  =>  =>  Subscriber
           -----------------------+   +-----------
                                  | =>  =>  =>  =>  Subscriber
                                  +---------------

In code terms say you have a service with a subject

class MessageService {
  private _messages = new Subject<Message>();

  get messages: Observable<Message> {
    return this._messages.asObservable();
  }

  sendMessage(message: Message) {
    this._messages.next(message);
  }
}

Note the messages getter returning the Subject as an Observable. This is not required. The Subject is already an observable, and anybody could subscribe directly to the Subject. But I think the asObservable pattern is used as a way to limit what users can do with it, i.e. so users only use it to subscribe to, and not emit to. We save the emitting for the sendMessage method.

Now with this service in place, we can inject it into different components, and this can be a way for two (or more) arbitrary components to communicate (or just receive arbitrary event notifications).

class ComponentOne {
  constructor(private messages: MessageService) {}

  onClick() {
    this.messages.sendMessage(new Message(..));
  }
}

class ComponentTwo {
  constructor(private messages: MessageService) {}

  ngOnInit() {
    this.messages.messages.subscribe((message: Message) => {
      this.message = message;
    });
  }
}

Angular's own EventEmitter is actually a Subject. When we subscribe to the EventEmitter, we are subscribing to a Subject, and when we emit on the EventEmitter, we are sending a message through the Subject for all subscribers.

See also:

• Subject vs BehaviorSubject vs ReplaySubject in Angular

Answer 2

Subjects are useful when the code you're in is the one that is actually originating the observable data. You can easily let your consumers subscribe to the Subject and then call the next() function to push data into the pipeline.

If, however, you are getting data from other source and are just passing it along (perhaps transforming it first), then you most likely want to use one of the creation operators shown here, such as Rx.Observable.fromEvent like so:

var clicks = Rx.Observable.fromEvent(document, 'click');
clicks.subscribe(x => console.log(x));

This allow you to stay in the functional paradigm, whereas using a Subject, while it has its uses, is considered by some to be a smell that you're trying to force imperative code into a declarative framework.

Here is a great answer that explains the difference in the two paradigms.