What is the correct way to share the result of an Angular Http network call in RxJs 5?

Question

By using Http, we call a method that does a network call and returns an http observable:

getCustomer() {
    return          


        

Answer 1

I starred the question, but i'll try and have a go at this.

//this will be the shared observable that 
//anyone can subscribe to, get the value, 
//but not cause an api request
let customer$ = new Rx.ReplaySubject(1);

getCustomer().subscribe(customer$);

//here's the first subscriber
customer$.subscribe(val => console.log('subscriber 1: ' + val));

//here's the second subscriber
setTimeout(() => {
  customer$.subscribe(val => console.log('subscriber 2: ' + val));  
}, 1000);

function getCustomer() {
  return new Rx.Observable(observer => {
    console.log('api request');
    setTimeout(() => {
      console.log('api response');
      observer.next('customer object');
      observer.complete();
    }, 500);
  });
}

Here's the proof :)

There is but one takeaway: getCustomer().subscribe(customer$)

We are not subscribing to the api response of getCustomer(), we are subscribing to a ReplaySubject which is observable which is also able to subscribe to a different Observable and (and this is important) hold it's last emitted value and republish it to any of it's(ReplaySubject's) subscribers.