Creating an Observable that performs work

Ok, now something more interesting. Let's create that interval operator that was used in previous examples.

This is equivalent of actual implementation for dispatch queue schedulers

func myInterval(_ interval: TimeInterval) -> Observable<Int> {
    return Observable.create { observer in
        print("Subscribed")
        let timer = DispatchSource.makeTimerSource(queue: DispatchQueue.global())
        timer.scheduleRepeating(deadline: DispatchTime.now() + interval, interval: interval)

        let cancel = Disposables.create {
            print("Disposed")
            timer.cancel()
        }

        var next = 0
        timer.setEventHandler {
            if cancel.isDisposed {
                return
            }
            observer.on(.next(next))
            next += 1
        }
        timer.resume()

        return cancel
    }
}

let counter = myInterval(0.1)

print("Started ----")

let subscription = counter
    .subscribe(onNext: { n in
        print(n)
    })


Thread.sleep(forTimeInterval: 0.5)

subscription.dispose()

print("Ended ----")

This will print

Started ----
Subscribed
0
1
2
3
4
Disposed
Ended ----

What if you would write

let counter = myInterval(0.1)

print("Started ----")

let subscription1 = counter
    .subscribe(onNext: { n in
        print("First \(n)")
    })
let subscription2 = counter
    .subscribe(onNext: { n in
        print("Second \(n)")
    })

Thread.sleep(forTimeInterval: 0.5)

subscription1.dispose()

Thread.sleep(forTimeInterval: 0.5)

subscription2.dispose()

print("Ended ----")

this would print:

Started ----
Subscribed
Subscribed
First 0
Second 0
First 1
Second 1
First 2
Second 2
First 3
Second 3
First 4
Second 4
Disposed
Second 5
Second 6
Second 7
Second 8
Second 9
Disposed
Ended ----

Every subscriber upon subscription usually generates it's own separate sequence of elements. Operators are stateless by default. There are vastly more stateless operators than stateful ones.