How to get latest changed events of IObservable<IObservable<T>>?

Question

My system has a lot of status objects - connections status, cpu load, logged users and so on. All of such events are merged into a single observable stream.

I want to make a admin utility to show actual status of the system and to show all of that counters.

How can I create an observable that would have a list of last changed values of all of the counters?

Here is a marble diagram I want to have:

s1 (cpu):               -s1_v1----s1_v1---s1_v2
s2 (users count):       --s2_v1--s2_v1---------s2_v2
s3 (some cat purr/sec)  ----s3_v1----s3_v1----s3_v1

flatten sequence: s1_v1-s2_v1-s3_v1-s2_v1-s1_v1-s3_v1-s1_v2-s3_v1-s2_v2

desired output:

s1_v1|s1_v1|s1_v1|s1_v2|s1_v2
      s2_v1|s2_v1|s2_v1|s2_v2
            s3_v1|s3_v1|s3_v1

So far I can to this implementation:

public class StatusImplementation
{
    public static IObservable<IDictionary<TKey, TValue>> Status<TKey, TValue>(
        params IObservable<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>>[] observables)
    {
        var uniqueObservables = observables
            .Select(x => x.Publish().RefCount().DistinctUntilChanged());

        return Observable.Create<IDictionary<TKey, TValue>>(o =>
        {
            var compositeDisposable = new CompositeDisposable();
            var dictionary = new Dictionary<TKey, TValue>();

            foreach (var uniqueObservable in uniqueObservables)
            {
                var disposable = uniqueObservable.Subscribe(x =>
                {
                    if (dictionary.ContainsKey(x.Key) && !dictionary[x.Key].Equals(x.Value))
                    {
                        var newDictionary = new Dictionary<TKey, TValue>(dictionary);
                        newDictionary[x.Key] = x.Value;
                        dictionary = newDictionary;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        dictionary.Add(x.Key, x.Value);
                    }

                    o.OnNext(dictionary);
                });
                compositeDisposable.Add(disposable);
            }

            return compositeDisposable;
        });
    }
}

And here is a usage example:

        var f1 = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1000))
            .Select(x => new KeyValuePair<string, long>("event 1", x));
        var f2 = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1200))
            .Select(x => new KeyValuePair<string, long>("event 2", x));
        var f3 = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1250))
            .Select(x => new KeyValuePair<string, long>("event 3", x));

        var combined = f1.Merge(f2).Merge(f3);

        StatusImplementation.Status(f1, f2, f3)
            .Select(x => string.Join(", ", x.ToList()))
            .Dump("\tstatus");

        combined.Dump("normal");

And the Dump function (from great book by Lee Campbell):

    public static void Dump<T>(this IObservable<T> source, string name)
    {
        source.Subscribe(
            i => Console.WriteLine("{0}-->{1}", name, i),
            ex => Console.WriteLine("{0} failed-->{1}", name, ex.Message),
            () => Console.WriteLine("{0} completed", name));
    }

So the question is: are there any better way to implement this functionality? Probably not using Dictionary inside the observable?

Thank you.

Answer 1

So if you start with your combined observable - which can be produced from any number of source observables - then you can do this:

var query =
    combined
        .Scan(
            new Dictionary<string, long>() as IDictionary<string, long>,
            (d, kvp) =>
            {
                var d2 = new Dictionary<string, long>(d) as IDictionary<string, long>;
                d2[kvp.Key] = kvp.Value;
                return d2;
            });

This will return a series of dictionary objects for each value produced by the combined observable. Each dictionary object will be a distinct instance - if the same instance was returned you'd have ever changing values which may cause threading issues.

Answer 2

You can use Observable.CombineLatest, which will emit the latest values from all observables each time a new value arrives. Then you don't need to use the dictionary.

 var f1 = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1000))
 .Select(x = > new KeyValuePair < string, long > ("event 1", x));
var f2 = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1200))
 .Select(x = > new KeyValuePair < string, long > ("event 2", x));
var f3 = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1250))
 .Select(x = > new KeyValuePair < string, long > ("event 3", x));

var combined = f1.Merge(f2).Merge(f3);

Observable.CombineLatest(f1, f2, f3)
 .Select(x = > string.Join(", ", x.ToList()))
 .Dump("\tstatus");

combined.Dump("normal");