LiveDataReactiveStreams

fromPublisher

LiveData<T> fromPublisher (Publisher<T> publisher)

Creates an Observable LiveData stream from a ReactiveStreams publisher.

When the LiveData becomes active, it subscribes to the emissions from the Publisher.

When the LiveData becomes inactive, the subscription is cleared. LiveData holds the last value emitted by the Publisher when the LiveData was active.

Therefore, in the case of a hot RxJava Observable, when a new LiveData Observer is added, it will automatically notify with the last value held in LiveData, which might not be the last value emitted by the Publisher.

Note that LiveData does NOT handle errors and it expects that errors are treated as states in the data that's held. In case of an error being emitted by the publisher, an error will be propagated to the main thread and the app will crash.

toPublisher

Publisher<T> toPublisher (LifecycleOwner lifecycle, 
                LiveData<T> liveData)

Adapts the given LiveData stream to a ReactiveStreams Publisher.

By using a good publisher implementation such as RxJava 2.x Flowables, most consumers will be able to let the library deal with backpressure using operators and not need to worry about ever manually calling request(long).

On subscription to the publisher, the observer will attach to the given LiveData. Once {@link Subscription#request) is called on the subscription object, an observer will be connected to the data stream. Calling request(Long.MAX_VALUE) is equivalent to creating an unbounded stream with no backpressure. If request with a finite count reaches 0, the observer will buffer the latest item and emit it to the subscriber when data is again requested. Any other items emitted during the time there was no backpressure requested will be dropped.