Angular/RxJs When should I unsubscribe from `Subscription`

Question

When should I store the Subscription instances and invoke unsubscribe() during the NgOnDestroy life cycle and when can I simply ignore them?

Answer 1

The official Edit #3 answer (and variations) works well, but the thing that gets me is the 'muddying' of the business logic around the observable subscription.

Here's another approach using wrappers.

Warining: experimental code

File subscribeAndGuard.ts is used to create a new Observable extension to wrap .subscribe() and within it to wrap ngOnDestroy().
Usage is the same as .subscribe(), except for an additional first parameter referencing the component.

import { Observable } from 'rxjs/Observable';
import { Subscription } from 'rxjs/Subscription';

const subscribeAndGuard = function(component, fnData, fnError = null, fnComplete = null) {

  // Define the subscription
  const sub: Subscription = this.subscribe(fnData, fnError, fnComplete);

  // Wrap component's onDestroy
  if (!component.ngOnDestroy) {
    throw new Error('To use subscribeAndGuard, the component must implement ngOnDestroy');
  }
  const saved_OnDestroy = component.ngOnDestroy;
  component.ngOnDestroy = () => {
    console.log('subscribeAndGuard.onDestroy');
    sub.unsubscribe();
    // Note: need to put original back in place
    // otherwise 'this' is undefined in component.ngOnDestroy
    component.ngOnDestroy = saved_OnDestroy;
    component.ngOnDestroy();

  };

  return sub;
};

// Create an Observable extension
Observable.prototype.subscribeAndGuard = subscribeAndGuard;

// Ref: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/declaration-merging.html
declare module 'rxjs/Observable' {
  interface Observable {
    subscribeAndGuard: typeof subscribeAndGuard;
  }
}

Here is a component with two subscriptions, one with the wrapper and one without. The only caveat is it must implement OnDestroy (with empty body if desired), otherwise Angular does not know to call the wrapped version.

import { Component, OnInit, OnDestroy } from '@angular/core';
import { Observable } from 'rxjs/Observable';
import 'rxjs/Rx';
import './subscribeAndGuard';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-subscribing',
  template: '
Subscribing component is active
',
})
export class SubscribingComponent implements OnInit, OnDestroy {

  ngOnInit() {

    // This subscription will be terminated after onDestroy
    Observable.interval(1000)
      .subscribeAndGuard(this,
        (data) => { console.log('Guarded:', data); },
        (error) => { },
        (/*completed*/) => { }
      );

    // This subscription will continue after onDestroy
    Observable.interval(1000)
      .subscribe(
        (data) => { console.log('Unguarded:', data); },
        (error) => { },
        (/*completed*/) => { }
      );
  }

  ngOnDestroy() {
    console.log('SubscribingComponent.OnDestroy');
  }
}

A demo plunker is here

An additional note: Re Edit 3 - The 'Official' Solution, this can be simplified by using takeWhile() instead of takeUntil() before subscriptions, and a simple boolean rather than another Observable in ngOnDestroy.

@Component({...})
export class SubscribingComponent implements OnInit, OnDestroy {

  iAmAlive = true;
  ngOnInit() {

    Observable.interval(1000)
      .takeWhile(() => { return this.iAmAlive; })
      .subscribe((data) => { console.log(data); });
  }

  ngOnDestroy() {
    this.iAmAlive = false;
  }
}