Version: 2.x

SubscriptionRef

A SubscriptionRef[A] is a Ref that lets us subscribe to receive the current value along with all changes to that value.

import zio._
import zio.stream._

trait SubscriptionRef[A] extends Ref.Synchronized[A] {
  def changes: ZStream[Any, Nothing, A]
}

We can use all the normal methods on Ref.Synchronized to get, set, or modify the current value.

The changes stream can be consumed to observe the current value as well as all changes to that value. Since changes is just a description of a stream, each time we run the stream we will observe the current value as of that point in time as well as all changes after that.

To create a SubscriptionRef you can use the make constructor, which makes a new SubscriptionRef with the specified initial value.

object SubscriptionRef {
  def make[A](a: A): UIO[SubscriptionRef[A]] =
    ???
}

A SubscriptionRef can be extremely useful to model some shared state where one or more observers must perform some action for all changes in that shared state. For example, in a functional reactive programming context the value of the SubscriptionRef might represent one part of the application state and each observer would need to update various user interface elements based on changes in that state.

To see how this works, let's create a simple example where a "server" repeatedly updates a value that is observed by multiple "clients".

def server(ref: Ref[Long]): UIO[Nothing] =
  ref.update(_ + 1).forever

Notice that server just takes a Ref and does not need to know anything about SubscriptionRef. From its perspective it is just updating a value.

def client(changes: ZStream[Any, Nothing, Long]): UIO[Chunk[Long]] =
  for {
    n     <- Random.nextLongBetween(1, 200)
    chunk <- changes.take(n).runCollect
  } yield chunk

Similarly client just takes a ZStream of values and does not have to know anything about the source of these values. In this case we will simply observe a fixed number of values.

To wire everything together, we start the server, then start multiple instances of the client in parallel, and finally shut down the server when we are done. We also actually create the SubscriptionRef here.

for {
  subscriptionRef <- SubscriptionRef.make(0L)
  server          <- server(subscriptionRef).fork
  chunks          <- ZIO.collectAllPar(List.fill(100)(client(subscriptionRef.changes)))
  _               <- server.interrupt
  _               <- ZIO.foreach(chunks)(chunk => Console.printLine(chunk))
} yield ()

This will ensure that each client observes the current value when it starts and all changes to the value after that.

Since the changes are just streams it is also easy to build much more complex programs using all the stream operators we are accustomed to. For example, we can transform these streams, filter them, or merge them with other streams.

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