Simple Observable

This is a crazy simple alternative to Reactive Cocoa and RxSwift, for those of us who are increasingly tired of repeatedly dealing with their breaking changes and incompatibilities.

It is designed for 100% Swift compatibility (ie not objective-c), with zero dependence on KVO or NSObject. In other words, this doesn't require iOS Foundation.

Installation

You can "install" this as a git submodule if you'd like. It is not available using any package manager because its whole purpose is to avoid that.

For the easiest installation, just grab the code, only a few hundred lines.

Observable Properties

The crux of Simple Observable is the Property. An observable property is defined with its type and an initial value.

A class that has observable properties may look like this:

class MyClass {
    let observableString: Property<String>
    let observableOptionalString = Property<String?>()

    init(string: String, optionalString: String?) {
        observableString = Property<String>(string)
        observableOptionalString.value = optionalString
    }
}

And a consumer of this class might use it like this:

let myClass = MyClass(string: "Required", optionalString: nil)
print("require string: \(myClass.observableString.value)")
let listener = myClass.observableString.on(next: { print("observable string value changed: \($0) })
myClass.observableString.value = "new value"

Removing Observers

You may want to break all references to property listeners, or to a specific one:

myClass.observableString.remove(listener: observerInstance)
myClass.observableString.removeAllListeners()

Property Listeners

A property listener is notified when its property value changes.

For example, if we wanted our callback to execute only on distinct values that aren't nil, we can add a listener on the above class that looks like:

let _ = myClass.observableOptionalString
    .filter("", { $0 != nil })
    .map { $0! }
    .distinct()
    .on(next: { print("here's a unique non-nil value! \($0) })

Methods

`onNext()`

This is the heart of Simple Observable: provide a callback to be executed with the new value of the observed property whenever it changes.

myClass.observableString.on(next: { print($0) })

You can register multiple callbacks for a single observable property:

let filteredListener = observableString.filter("default", { $0 != nil }).map { $0! }
filteredListener.on(next: { print($0) })
//...
filteredListener.on(next: { self.prop = $0 })

`map()`

Map the new value to another using a simple closure. This is incredibly handy for things like translating an Error to its localized string, or returning a boolean for whether a value is valid as it changes.

// wrap strings in bold tags
observableString.map({(unmappedValue) in
  return "<b>\(unmappedValue)</b>"
}).on(next: { print($0) })

// map from one type to another
var label: String = "default"
observableOptionalString.map({(optionalString) in
    optionalString ?? "default"
}).on(next: { label = $0 })

`filter()`

Control when your callbacks are executed using filter(). Pass a closure that takes returns a boolean given the sent value for whether to send the value along the chain.

myClass.observableString.filter("default", {(newValue) -> Bool in
  return newValue == "test"
})

Note that filter() takes an initial value as its first parameter. This is because the current, initial value of the observed property may not pass your filter.

`distinct()`

Calling this will prevent duplicate values from being sent:

observableString.distinct().on(next: { print($0) })
observableString.value = "once" // prints "once"
observableString.value = "twice" // prints "twice"
observableString.value = "twice" // doesn't print

Contributing

Feel free to contribute! Fork the repo and submit a pull request.

TODO

Bindings! I want to be able to bind a property's value to one of my own. That's kind of the whole point.
Better handling of initialValue. Specifically, this is problematic when there is no reasonable default value when filtering
Something like a Command in ReactiveCocoa, that contains a closure to run when the command is executed, an observable Bool for whether the command is being run at the moment, and an observable Error?
combine() or flatten(), that accepts multiple properties and sends either the latest value of each, or maps them based on a closure

thelowlypeon / simple-observable