Reactive extension Timer/Interval reset - c#

I have a project where I need to send a status message every 10 seconds unless there's been an update in the meantime. Meaning, every time there would be an update, the timer would reset.
var res = Observable
.Interval(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10))
.Where(_ => condition);
res.Subscribe(_ => Console.WriteLine("Status sent."));
Now I know that the "Where" will only be applied when the timer ends, so it doesn't help. But, I'm wondering if there's a way to reset the Interval; or to use a Timer() with a repeat.

This is pretty easy to implement using standard Rx operators.
What isn't clear from your question is exactly what an "update" is. I'm going to assume that you have some sort of observable that fires for every update or that you can create a subject that you'll call .OnNext(...) when there is an update. Without observable updates it is hard to know when to reset the timer.
So here's the code:
var update = new Subject<bool>();
var res =
update
.Select(x => Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10.0)))
.Switch();
res
.Subscribe(_ => Console.WriteLine("Status sent."));
update.OnNext(true);
The res query now waits until it gets a value from update and then it selects a new Observable.Interval. This means that after the Select the type is an IObservable<IObservable<long>>, so the .Switch() is required to turn it in to a IObservable<long>. .Switch() does this by only passing out values from the latest observed observable and disposing of any previous observables. In other words, for each update a new timer is started and the previous timer is cancelled. This means that if you have updates occurring more frequently than 10 seconds then the timer will never fire.
Now, if the res observable is an update in its own right, then you can do this:
res
.Subscribe(_ =>
{
update.OnNext(true);
Console.WriteLine("Status sent.");
});
That's fine - it still works, but for each timer firing res will create a new timer. It will mean that anything relying on your update observable/subject will still function correctly.

I keep this little helper method with me:
public static IObservable<long> CreateAutoResetInterval<TSource>(IObservable<TSource> resetter, TimeSpan timeSpan, bool immediate = false)
{
return resetter.Select(_ => immediate ? Observable.Interval(timeSpan).StartWith(0) : Observable.Interval(timeSpan)).Switch();
}
It's basically the same mechanism as Enigmativity's answer

I think you could also get away with using Throttle here. The purpose of Throttle is not to let elements though if another element is received within the given timespan. So in your case if an update message is received within 10 secs then don't send a status. See unit test below which uses 200 ticks as the throttle period.
[TestMethod]
public void Publish_Status_If_Nothing_Receieved()
{
//Arrange
var scheduler = new TestScheduler();
var statusObserver = scheduler.CreateObserver<Unit>();
var updateStream = scheduler.CreateColdObservable(OnNext(100, 1), OnNext(200, 2), OnNext(600, 3),
OnNext(700, 4));
var waitTime = TimeSpan.FromTicks(200);
//Act
updateStream.Throttle(waitTime, scheduler)
.Select(_ => Unit.Default)
.Subscribe(statusObserver);
//Verify no status received
scheduler.AdvanceTo(100);
Assert.AreEqual(0, statusObserver.Messages.Count);
//Verify no status received
scheduler.AdvanceTo(200);
Assert.AreEqual(0, statusObserver.Messages.Count);
//Assert status received
scheduler.AdvanceTo(400);
statusObserver.Messages.AssertEqual(OnNext(400, Unit.Default));
//Verify no more status received
scheduler.AdvanceTo(700);
statusObserver.Messages.AssertEqual(OnNext(400, Unit.Default));
}

Related

Why is RefCount not working after all initial subscribers disconnect?

Consider the following:
[Fact]
public void foo()
{
var result = new Subject<bool>();
var startCount = 0;
var completionCount = 0;
var obs = Observable
.Defer(() =>
{
++startCount;
return result.FirstAsync();
})
.Do(_ => ++completionCount)
.Publish()
.RefCount();
// pretend there are lots of subscribers at once
var s1 = obs.Subscribe();
var s2 = obs.Subscribe();
var s3 = obs.Subscribe();
// even so, we only expect to be started once
Assert.Equal(1, startCount);
Assert.Equal(0, completionCount);
// and we won't complete until the result ticks through
result.OnNext(true);
Assert.Equal(1, startCount);
Assert.Equal(1, completionCount);
s1.Dispose();
s2.Dispose();
s3.Dispose();
// now try exactly the same thing again
s1 = obs.Subscribe();
s2 = obs.Subscribe();
s3 = obs.Subscribe();
// startCount is 4 here instead of the expected 2!
Assert.Equal(2, startCount);
Assert.Equal(1, completionCount);
result.OnNext(true);
Assert.Equal(2, startCount);
Assert.Equal(2, completionCount);
s1.Dispose();
s2.Dispose();
s3.Dispose();
}
My understanding of Publish + RefCount is that a connection to the source is maintained as long as there is at least one subscriber. Once the last subscriber disconnects, any future subscriber will re-initiate the connection to the source.
As you can see in my test, everything works perfectly the first time through. But the second time, the deferred observable inside the pipeline is executed once for every new subscriber.
I can see via the debugger that for the first group of subscribers, obs._count (which counts subscribers) increases for each call to Subscribe. But for the second group of subscribers, it remains zero.
Why is this happening and what can I do to rectify my pipeline?
The answer from #user631090 is close, but incorrect, so I thought I'd answer myself.
It's because Publish will immediately complete new subscribers if the stream it published has itself completed. You can kind of see that in the diagram here:
But it would have been nice if the diagram included a subscriber after the underlying stream completes.
To add to the confusion, Defer is still called for new subscribers. But its return value is simply ignored by Publish because of the initial stream completing.
I'm as yet unable to come up with a way to implement my intended use case. I thought perhaps using Multicast rather than Publish, creating a new subject as necessary. But I haven't been able to achieve that yet. And it seems rather painful for what I would think is a common use case.
It's because the underlying observable result has already completed. So each new subscriber is just getting the OnCompleted callback.
If ObservableDefer was creating a new sequence each time or one that didn't complete you would see the desired behavior.
e.g.
return result.FirstAsync().Concat(Observable.Never<bool>());
You will need to remove the Assert.Equal(1, completionCount);

Throttle IObservable based on whether async handler is still busy

I have an IObservable that generates a value every second, followed by a select that runs code that may take some time:
var events = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1));
ssoInfoObservable = events
.Select(async e =>
{
Console.Out.WriteLine("Select : " + e);
await Task.Delay(4000);
return e;
})
.SelectMany(t => t.ToObservable())
.Subscribe(l => Console.WriteLine("Subscribe: " + l));
The long-running operation takes 4 seconds in my example. While the code inside Select is running, I do not want another value from the Interval to be generated. How do I accomplish this? Is this possible? Maybe use a specific IScheduler implementation?
Note that if there's no async code, everything works as expected as described here.
This question is very similar to one I asked earlier, except for the async/await.
See this sample on creating an async generate function. Your would be slightly different in that you need a time offset and you don't need the iterate so it would look more like this:
public static IObservable<T> GenerateAsync<T>(TimeSpan span,
Func<int, Task<T>> generator,
IScheduler scheduler = null)
{
scheduler = scheduler ?? Scheduler.Default;
return Observable.Create<T>(obs =>
{
return scheduler.Schedule(0, span, async (idx, recurse) =>
{
obs.OnNext(await generator(idx));
recurse(idx + 1, span);
});
});
}
Usage:
Extensions.GenerateAsync(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1), idx => /*Async work, return a task*/, scheduler);
As a possible second option you could look to port the implementation of switchFirst into C#. SwitchFirst will subscribe to the first Observable it receives and ignore subsequent ones until its current subscription completes.
If you took that approach you could have something like:
Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1))
.Select(e => Observable.FromAsync(() => /*Do Async stuff*/)
.SwitchFirst()
.Subscribe();

Using Rx Timeout with FromEventPattern Observer

I'm trying to implement a timeout when there no events in a period if time.
Scenario:
I have an object that raises an event every time a message is received.
I would like to react when there are no messages (OnReceived events) received in a period of time (lets say, 20 secs)
This what I have so far
var observable = Observable.FromEventPattern<BasicDeliverEventHandler>(
handler => _innerConsumer.Received += OnReceived,
handler => _innerConsumer.Received -= OnReceived);
var timeout = observable.Timeout(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20));
using (timeout.Subscribe(_ => { },
exception =>
Tracer.Warning("Eventing Consumer timeout : {0}", exception.Message)))
{ }
I'm creating an observable from a EventPattern. Then, using the timeout. What I don't understand is how to get the exception from the Timeout. I want to react when that´s happen.
I don't think the Subcribe method is the correct way, but that's I get from the docs.
I'm open to suggestions or other alternatives if this is not the correct one.
Thanks in advance
Timeout is problematic because it terminates the sequence. Throttle is what you want - but you also need to insert a start element in case you get no events at all.
I convert the events to Unit.Default - this is useful when you don't care what happened, just that something happened - and use StartWith to seed the throttle:
var timeout = observable.Select(_ => Unit.Default)
.StartWith(Unit.Default)
.Throttle(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20);
var subs = timeout.Subscribe(_ => Console.WriteLine("Timeout!"));
Out of interest, I also have a similar solution to this for detecting disconnected clients - this time providing a single timeout notification for multiple sources: http://www.zerobugbuild.com/?p=230
Let's take a look at the code you have.
var observable =
Observable.FromEventPattern<BasicDeliverEventHandler>(
handler => _innerConsumer.Received += OnReceived,
handler => _innerConsumer.Received -= OnReceived
);
var timeout = observable.Timeout(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20));
using (timeout.Subscribe(
_ => { },
exception =>
Tracer.Warning("Eventing Consumer timeout : {0}", exception.Message)))
{
}
We can re-write the subscription logic like so:
var subscription = timeout.Subscribe(
_ => { }
exception =>
Tracer.Warning("Eventing Consumer timeout : {0}", exception.Message)
);
subscription.Dispose(); // This is bad
Since your subscription is being disposed of immediately, your observer isn't receiving an of the notifications you're expecting.
By removing subscription.Dispose(), or the using statement, your observer should receive a TimeoutException 20 seconds after subscribing. However, because Exceptions also cancel subscriptions, you will only ever receive this Exception once.
Furthermore, the Timeout operator starts a timeout at the time of subscription, and does not cancel the timeout unless the subscription is cancelled, or the source observer completes.
You might want to try using a different operator, such as Throttle.
observable.Throttle(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20))
.Subscribe(x =>
Console.WriteLine("it has been 20 seconds since we received the last notification.")
)

Why is Observable.Finally not called when Observable.Generate finishes?

I needed to alternate between two states with each state having a different interval time.
The best way I could think of doing this was to use Reactive Extensions' Observable.Generate
which is pretty awsome.
From what I read on msdn and other sites, Observable.Finally() should fire if the
observable "terminates gracefully or exceptionally". I was testing the following code
(in LINQPad) to see how it works, but I can not get .Finall() to fire at all.
var ia = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1);
var ib = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(.2);
var start = DateTime.UtcNow;
var ct = new CancellationTokenSource();
var o = Observable.Generate(
true,
// s => !ct.IsCancellationRequested,
s => (DateTime.UtcNow-start) < TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3) && !ct.IsCancellationRequested,
s => !s,
s => s ? "on" : "off",
s => s? ib : ia)
// .TakeUntil(start+TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3))
.Concat(Observable.Return("end"));
o.Subscribe( s=> s.Dump(), ct.Token);
var t = o.ToTask(ct.Token);
t.ContinueWith(x => x.Dump("done"));
o.Finally(() => "finallY".Dump()); // never gets called?
Thread.Sleep(10000);
ct.Cancel();
If I make Thread.Sleep 10s, the observable sequence finishes and the Task.ContinueWith fires,
but not .Finally().
If I make Thread.Sleep 2s, the observable sequence is canceled and the Task.ContinueWith again fires,
but not .Finally().
Why not?
Look at the return type of the Finally method; should give you a hint. Just like the Concat method returns a new IObservable with the new sequence concatenated to it, but doesn't change the original, the Finally method returns a new IObservable that has that final action, but you're subscribing to the original IObservable. Put the following line in front of your Subscribe call and it'll work.
o = o.Finally(() => "finallY".Dump());
I agree it's an odd API choice though; I'd think of Finally as being more akin to Subscribe than to Concat. You're subscribing to the finally "event"; it's odd that the API forces you to create a completely new IObservable and then subscribe to that just to get the Finally thing to happen. Plus it allows a potential error (made evident if we use the function in your question) that if you subscribe twice to that new IObservable, your Finally function will execute twice. So you have to make sure that one of your subscriptions is on the "finallied" IObservable and the others are all on the original. Just seems unusual.
I guess the way to think about it is that Finally isn't meant to modify the observable, but rather to modify the subscription itself. i.e., they don't expect you typically to make openly-accessible named observables that have Finally things (var o = Observable.[...].Finally(...);) rather it's meant to go inline with the subscription call itself (var subscription = o.Finally(...).Subscribe(...);)

How can i slow down an Observable without throwing away values in RX?

My scenario:
I have a computation that should be run about once a second. After it is run there should be a wait of about 200ms for other stuff to catch up. If the compuation is still running after a second it should be started a second time, but should the program should wait until it is finished and start the next computation 200ms after finishing.
The way I am doing it now:
_refreshFinished = new Subject<bool>();
_autoRefresher = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1000))
.Zip(_refreshFinished, (x,y) => x)
.Subscribe(x => AutoRefresh(stuff));
The problem with this code is, that i see no way to put in a delay after a computation finished.
The Delay method only delays the first element of the observable collection. Usually this behaviour is the right once, since you would have to buffer an endless amount of elements if you wanted to buffer everyone, but since delaying the call to Autorefesh by 200ms delays the output of _refreshFinished by 200ms as well there would be no buffer overhead.
Basicly I want an Observable that fires every every MaxTime(some_call,1000ms) then gets delayed by 200ms or even better, some dynamic value. At this point i dont even really care about the values that are running through this, although that might change in the future.
I´m open to any suggestions
Observable.Generate() has a number of overloads which will let you dynamically adjust the time in which the next item is created.
For instance
IScheduler schd = Scheduler.TaskPool;
var timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1);
var shortDelay = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(200);
var longerDelay = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(500);
Observable.Generate(schd.Now,
time => true,
time => schd.Now,
time => new object(), // your code here
time => schd.Now.Subtract(time) > timeout ? shortDelay : longerDelay ,
schd);
This sounds more like a job for the new async framework http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/gg316360
There is a way to do it. Its not the easiest thing ever, since the wait time has to be dynamicly calculated on each value but it works and is pretty generic.
When you use thise code you can just insert the code that should be called in YOURCODE and everything else works automaticly. You code will be basicly be called every Max(yourCodeTime+extraDelay,usualCallTime+extraDelay). This means yourCode wont be called twice at the same time and the app will always have extraDelay of time to do other stuff.
If there is some easier/other way to do this i would ove to hear it.
double usualCallTime = 1000;
double extraDealy = 100;
var subject = new Subject<double>();
var subscription =
sub.TimeInterval()
.Select(x =>
{
var processingTime = x.Interval.TotalMilliseconds - x.Value;
double timeToWait =
Math.Max(0, usualCallTime - processingTime) + extraDelay;
return Observable.Timer(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(timeToWait))
.Select(ignore => timeToWait);
})
.Switch()
.Subscribe(x => {YOURCODE();sub.OnNext(x)});
sub.OnNext(0);
private static void YOURCODE()
{
// do stuff here
action.Invoke();
}
If I understand your problem correctly, you have a long-running compute function such as this:
static String compute()
{
int t = 300 + new Random().Next(1000);
Console.Write("[{0}...", t);
Thread.Sleep(t);
Console.Write("]");
return Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
}
And you want to call this function at least once per second but without overlapping calls, and with a minimum 200ms recovery time between calls. The code below works for this situation.
I started with a more functional approach (using Scan() and Timestamp()), more in the style of Rx--because I was looking for a good Rx exercise--but in the end, this non-aggregating approach was just simpler.
static void Main()
{
TimeSpan period = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1000);
TimeSpan recovery = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(200);
Observable
.Repeat(Unit.Default)
.Select(_ =>
{
var s = DateTimeOffset.Now;
var x = compute();
var delay = period - (DateTimeOffset.Now - s);
if (delay < recovery)
delay = recovery;
Console.Write("+{0} ", (int)delay.TotalMilliseconds);
return Observable.Return(x).Delay(delay).First();
})
.Subscribe(Console.WriteLine);
}
Here's the output:
[1144...]+200 a7cb5d3d-34b9-4d44-95c9-3e363f518e52
[1183...]+200 359ad966-3be7-4027-8b95-1051e3fb20c2
[831...]+200 f433b4dc-d075-49fe-9c84-b790274982d9
[766...]+219 310c9521-7bee-4acc-bbca-81c706a4632a
[505...]+485 0715abfc-db9b-42e2-9ec7-880d7ff58126
[1244...]+200 30a3002a-924a-4a64-9669-095152906d85
[1284...]+200 e5b1cd79-da73-477c-bca0-0870f4b5c640
[354...]+641 a43c9df5-53e8-4b58-a0df-7561cf4b0483
[1094...]+200 8f25019c-77a0-4507-b05e-c9ab8b34bcc3
[993...]+200 840281bd-c8fd-4627-9324-372636f8dea3
[edit: this sample uses Rx 2.0(RC) 2.0.20612.0]
Suppose you have an existing 'IObservable' , then the following will work
var delay = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.0);
var actual = source.Scan(
new ConcurrentQueue<object>(),
(q, i) =>
{
q.Enqueue(i);
return q;
}).CombineLatest(
Observable.Interval(delay),
(q, t) =>
{
object item;
if (q.TryDequeue(out item))
{
return item;
}
return null;
}).Where(v => v != null);
'actual' is your resultant observable. But keep in mind that the above code has turned that into a Hot observable if it wasn't hot already. So you won't get 'OnCompleted' called.

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