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JavaScript Rxjs

Rxjs Filtering Operators — Getting Specific Values

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Rxjs is a library for doing reactive programming. Creation operators are useful for generating data from various data sources to be subscribed to by Observers.

In this article, we’ll look at some filter operators, including elementsAt , filter , first , ignoreElements , and last .

elementAt

The elementAt operator lets us get a single value by at the specified index in a sequence of emissions from the source Observable.

It takes up to 2 arguments. The first is the index , which is the number starting from 0 which the source Observable has emitted since subscription.

The second is the defaultValue which is an optional argument for the default value returned if the value is with the given index is not found.

It returns an Observable that emits a single item if it’s found. Otherwise, the default value provided by the optional second argument will be emitted.

A ArgumentOutOfRangeError will be thrown if the index provided is less than 0 or the Observable has completed before emitting the emission with the givenindex .

For example, we can use it as follows:

import { of } from "rxjs";  
import { elementAt } from "rxjs/operators";

const of$ = of(1, 2, 3);  
const result = of$.pipe(elementAt(2));  
result.subscribe(x => console.log(x));

Then we get 3 from console.log .

filter

The filter operator lets us filter out the emitted values from the source Observable by emitting the values from the source Observable that satisfies the conditions that are returned by a predicate function.

It takes up to 2 arguments. The first is the predicate function that’s evaluated each time the source Observable emits a value. The value is checked against this and it’s emitted by the returned Observe if it meets the criteria.

The predicate function takes 2 parameters, which are the object emitted from the source Observable and the index respectively. index starts from 0 and it’s the index -th object emitted since subscription.

For example, we can use it as follows:

import { of } from "rxjs";  
import { filter } from "rxjs/operators";

const of$ = of(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);  
const result = of$.pipe(filter(x => x % 2 === 0));  
result.subscribe(x => console.log(x));

Then we get:

2  
4  
6

first

The first operator emits only the first value emitted by the source Observable.

It takes 2 optional arguments. The first is the predicate function which is called with each item to test for conditional matching.

The second is the default value, which is optional. It’s the default value that’s emitted in case no valid value was found from the source.

For example, we can use it as follows:

import { of } from "rxjs";  
import { first } from "rxjs/operators";

const of$ = of(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);  
const result = of$.pipe(first());  
result.subscribe(x => console.log(x));

The code above takes the values from the of$ Observable and emits the first one, so we get 1 from the console.log .

We can also pass in a function to check for a match from the source Observable. For example, we can write:

import { of } from "rxjs";  
import { first } from "rxjs/operators";

const of$ = of(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);  
const result = of$.pipe(first(x => x % 3 === 0));  
result.subscribe(x => console.log(x));

Since we passed in x => x % 3 === 0 to thefirst operator, first will check for the first one that matches our condition, which is a number that’s evenly divisible by 3.

Then we get the value 3 from console.log since that’s the first number of of$ that matches the condition.

We can pass in a default value as the second argument of first :

import { of } from "rxjs";  
import { first } from "rxjs/operators";  
const of$ = of(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);  
const result = of$.pipe(first(x => x % 3 === 10, "none"));  
result.subscribe(x => console.log(x));

Since there’s no number in of$ that has the remainder 10 when divided by 3, the 'none' string will be emitted by the returned Observable.

ignoreElements

ignoreElements ignores all items emitted by the source Observable and only passes calls of complete or error .

It takes no arguments.

For example, we can use it as follows:

import { of } from "rxjs";  
import { ignoreElements } from "rxjs/operators";  
const of$ = of(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);  
const result = of$.pipe(ignoreElements());  
result.subscribe(  
  val => console.log(val),  
  err => console.log(err),  
  () => console.log("end")  
);

Since nothing from the of$ Observable is emitted before completion, we just get 'end' logged.

last

The last operator returns an Observable that emits only the last item that’s emitted by the source Observable. If a predicate function is passed into last , then the last value that matches the condition returned by the predicate will be emitted.

It takes 2 optional arguments. The first is the predicate, which is optional. The predicate returns the condition that the emitted value from the source has to satisfy.

The second is an optional argument for the defaultValue , which the value that’ll be emitted if nothing emitted from the source Observable meets the condition returned by the predicate function.

For example, we can use it as follows:

import { of } from "rxjs";  
import { last } from "rxjs/operators";  
const of$ = of(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);  
const result = of$.pipe(last());  
result.subscribe(val => console.log(val));

Then we get 6 logged since it’s the last value emitted by the of$ Observable.

We can also specify a condition as follows:

import { of } from "rxjs";  
import { last } from "rxjs/operators";  
const of$ = of(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);  
const result = of$.pipe(last(x => x % 2 === 1));  
result.subscribe(val => console.log(val));

Then we get 5 logged since it’s the last value from the of$ Observable that’s odd.

elementAt operator lets us get a single value by at the specified index in a sequence of emissions from the source Observable.

The filter operator only emits the values from the source Observable that satisfies the conditions that are returned by a predicate function.

first operator emits only the first value emitted by the source Observable.

ignoreElements and only passes calls of complete or error and ignores everything else.

last returns an Observable that emits only the last item that’s emitted by the source Observable or the last one that meets the condition in the predicate function if it’s specified.

By John Au-Yeung

Web developer specializing in React, Vue, and front end development.

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