Combine Mono with Flux

Question

I want to create a service that combines results from two reactive sources. One is producing Mono and another one is producing Flux. For merging I need the same value of mono for every flux emitted.

For now I have something like this

Flux.zip(
   service1.getConfig(), //produces flux
   service2.getContext() //produces mono
           .cache().repeat()
)

This gives me what I need,

• service2 is called only once
• context is provided for every configuration
• resulting flux has as many elements as configurations

But I have noticed that repeat() is emitting a massive amount of elements after context is cached. Is this a problem?

Is there something I can do to limit number of repeats to the number of received configurations, yet still do both request simultaneously? Or this is not an issue and I Can safely ignore those extra emitted elements?

I tried to use combineLatest but depending on timing I some elements fo configuration can get lost and not processed.

EDIT

Looking at the suggestions from @Ricard Kollcaku I have created sample test that shows why this is not what I'm looking for.

import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;
import java.util.stream.Stream;

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

import reactor.core.publisher.Flux;
import reactor.core.publisher.Mono;
import reactor.core.scheduler.Schedulers;
import reactor.test.StepVerifier;

public class SampleTest
{
    Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SampleTest.class);
    AtomicLong counter = new AtomicLong(0);

    Flux<String> getFlux()
    {
        return Flux.fromStream(() -> {
            LOG.info("flux started");
            sleep(1000);
            return Stream.of("a", "b", "c");
        }).subscribeOn(Schedulers.parallel());
    }

    Mono<String> getMono()
    {
        return Mono.defer(() -> {
            counter.incrementAndGet();
            LOG.info("mono started");
            sleep(1000);
            return Mono.just("mono");
        }).subscribeOn(Schedulers.parallel());
    }

    private void sleep(final long milis)
    {
        try
        {
            Thread.sleep(milis);
        }
        catch (final InterruptedException e)
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    @Test
    void test0()
    {
        final Flux<String> result = Flux.zip(
                getFlux(),
                getMono().cache().repeat()
                         .doOnNext(n -> LOG.warn("signal on mono", n)),
                (s1, s2) -> s1 + " " + s2
        );

        assertResults(result);
    }

    @Test
    void test1()
    {
        final Flux<String> result =
                getFlux().flatMap(s -> Mono.zip(Mono.just(s), getMono(),
                        (s1, s2) -> s1 + " " + s2));
        assertResults(result);
    }

    @Test
    void test2()
    {
        final Flux<String> result = getFlux().flatMap(s -> getMono().map((s1 -> s + " " + s1)));
        assertResults(result);
    }

    void assertResults(final Flux<String> result)
    {
        final Flux<String> flux = result;

        StepVerifier.create(flux)
                    .expectNext("a mono")
                    .expectNext("b mono")
                    .expectNext("c mono")
                    .verifyComplete();

        Assertions.assertEquals(1L, counter.get());
    }

Looking at the test results for test1 and test2

2020-01-20 12:55:22.542 INFO  [] [] [     parallel-3]  SampleTest  : flux started  
2020-01-20 12:55:24.547 INFO  [] [] [     parallel-4]  SampleTest  : mono started  
2020-01-20 12:55:24.547 INFO  [] [] [     parallel-5]  SampleTest  : mono started  
2020-01-20 12:55:24.548 INFO  [] [] [     parallel-6]  SampleTest  : mono started  

expected: <1> but was: <3>

I need to reject your proposal. In both cases getMono is - invoked as many times as items in flux - invoked after first element of flux arrives And those are interactions that I want to avoid. My services are making http requests under the hood and they may be time consuming.

My current solution does not have this problem, but if I add logger to my zip I will get this

2020-01-20 12:55:20.505 INFO  [] [] [     parallel-1]  SampleTest  : flux started  
2020-01-20 12:55:20.508 INFO  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : mono started  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.523 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.528 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.529 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.529 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.529 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.529 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.530 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.530 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.530 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.530 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.531 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.531 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.531 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.531 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.531 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.532 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.532 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.532 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.532 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.533 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.533 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.533 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.533 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.533 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.533 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.533 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.534 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.534 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.534 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.534 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.534 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  
2020-01-20 12:55:21.535 WARN  [] [] [     parallel-2]  SampleTest  : signal on mono  

As you can see there is a lot of elements emitted by combining cache().repeat() together and I want to know if this is an issue and if yes then how to avoid it (but keep single invocation of mono and parallel invocation).

Answer 1

I think what you are trying to achieve could be done with Flux.join

Here is some example code:

Flux<Integer> flux = Flux.concat(Mono.just(1).delayElement(Duration.ofMillis(100)),
        Mono.just(2).delayElement(Duration.ofMillis(500))).log();

Mono<String> mono = Mono.just("a").delayElement(Duration.ofMillis(50)).log();

List<String> list = flux.join(mono, (v1) -> Flux.never(), (v2) -> Flux.never(), (x, y) -> {
    return x + y;
}).collectList().block();

System.out.println(list);

Answer 2

Libraries like Project Reactor and RxJava try to provide as much combinations of their capabilities as possible, but do not provide access to the instruments of combining capabilities. And as a result, there are always corner cases which are not covered.

My own DF4J, as far as I know, is the only asynchronous library which provides the means to combine capabilities. For example, this is how user can zip Flux and Mono: (of course, this class is not part of DF4J itself):

import org.df4j.core.dataflow.Actor;
import org.df4j.core.port.InpFlow;
import reactor.core.publisher.Flux;
import reactor.core.publisher.Mono;

abstract class ZipActor<T1, T2> extends Actor {
    InpFlow<T1> inpFlow = new InpFlow<>(this);
    InpFlow<T2> inpScalar = new InpFlow<>(this);

    ZipActor(Flux<T1> flux, Mono<T2> mono) {
        flux.subscribe(inpFlow);
        mono.subscribe(inpScalar);
    }

    @Override
    protected void runAction() throws Throwable {
        if (inpFlow.isCompleted()) {
            stop();
            return;
        }
        T1 element1 = inpFlow.removeAndRequest();
        T2 element2 = inpScalar.current();
        runAction(element1, element2);
    }

    protected abstract void runAction(T1 element1, T2 element2);
}

and this is how it can be used:

@Test
public void ZipActorTest() {
    Flux<Integer> flux = Flux.just(1,2,3);
    Mono<Integer> mono = Mono.just(5);
    ZipActor<Integer, Integer> actor = new ZipActor<Integer, Integer>(flux, mono){
        @Override
        protected void runAction(Integer element1, Integer element2) {
            System.out.println("got:"+element1+" and:"+element2);
        }
    };
    actor.start();
    actor.join();
}

The console output is as follows:

got:1 and:5
got:2 and:5
got:3 and:5

Answer 3

You can do it with just a simple change

    getFlux()
    .flatMap(s -> Mono.zip(Mono.just(s),getMono(), (s1, s2) -> s1+" "+s2))
    .subscribe(System.out::println);

Flux<String> getFlux(){
    return Flux.just("a","b","c");
}
Mono<String> getMono(){
    return  Mono.just("mono");
}

if you want to use zip but you can achieve same results using flatmap

      getFlux()
            .flatMap(s -> getMono()
                    .map((s1 -> s + " " + s1)))
            .subscribe(System.out::println);
}

Flux<String> getFlux() {
    return Flux.just("a", "b", "c");
}

Mono<String> getMono() {
    return Mono.just("mono");
}

in both result is: a mono b mono c mono

EDIT Ok now i understand it better. Can you try this solution.

   getMono().
            flatMapMany(s -> getFlux().map(s1 -> s1 + " " + s))
            .subscribe(System.out::println);


Flux<String> getFlux() {
    return Flux.defer(() -> {
        System.out.println("init flux");
        return Flux.just("a", "b", "c");
    });
}

Mono<String> getMono() {
    return Mono.defer(() -> {
        System.out.println("init Mono");
        return Mono.just("sss");
    });
}