Book Image

Learning RxJava

By : Nield
Book Image

Learning RxJava

By: Nield

Overview of this book

RxJava is a library for composing asynchronous and event-based programs using Observable sequences for the JVM, allowing developers to build robust applications in less time. Learning RxJava addresses all the fundamentals of reactive programming to help readers write reactive code, as well as teach them an effective approach to designing and implementing reactive libraries and applications. Starting with a brief introduction to reactive programming concepts, there is an overview of Observables and Observers, the core components of RxJava, and how to combine different streams of data and events together. You will also learn simpler ways to achieve concurrency and remain highly performant, with no need for synchronization. Later on, we will leverage backpressure and other strategies to cope with rapidly-producing sources to prevent bottlenecks in your application. After covering custom operators, testing, and debugging, the book dives into hands-on examples using RxJava on Android as well as Kotlin.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Concurrency in a nutshell

Concurrency, also called multithreading, can be applied in a variety of ways. Usually, the motivation behind concurrency is to run more than one task simultaneously in order to get work done faster. As we discussed in the beginning of this book, concurrency can also help our code resemble the real world more, where multiple activities occur at the same time.

First, let's cover some fundamental concepts behind concurrency.

One common application of concurrency is to run different tasks simultaneously. Imagine that you have three yard chores: mow the lawn, trim the trees, and pull the weeds. If you do these three chores by yourself, you can only do one chore at a time. You cannot mow the lawn and trim the trees simultaneously. You have to sequentially mow the lawn first, then trim the trees, then pull the weeds. But if you have a friend to help you...