Handle empty response with retrofit and rxjava 2.x

Question

When using rxjava 1.x i used to return Observable<Void> to handle empty response from retrofit:

@POST( "login" )
Observable<Void> getToken( @Header( "Authorization" ) String authorization,
                                       @Header( "username" ) String username,
                                       @Header( "password" ) String password );

But since rxjava 2.x won't emit anything with Void is there any good practice to handle those empty responses?

Answer 1

Completable was designed for such cases. It available since RxJava 1.1.1. From the official docs:

Represents a deferred computation without any value but only indication for completion or exception. The class follows a similar event pattern as Reactive-Streams: onSubscribe (onError|onComplete)?

So just change your method's return type:

@POST("login")
Completable getToken(@Header("Authorization") String authorization,
                     @Header("username")      String username,
                     @Header("password")      String password);

And rewrite your subscriber, e.g.:

apiManager.getToken(auth, name, pass)
    ...
    .subscribe(() -> {
        //success
    }, exception -> {
        //error
    });

Answer 2

Another solution is:

@POST("login")
Observable<Response<Void>> getToken( @Header( "Authorization" ) String authorization,
                                       @Header( "username" ) String username,
                                       @Header( "password" ) String password );

Answer 3

Did you try using Observable<Object> ?

This is from the official documentation of RxJava 2:

enum Irrelevant { INSTANCE; }

Observable<Object> source = Observable.create((ObservableEmitter<Object> emitter) -> {
   System.out.println("Side-effect 1");
   emitter.onNext(Irrelevant.INSTANCE);

   System.out.println("Side-effect 2");
   emitter.onNext(Irrelevant.INSTANCE);

   System.out.println("Side-effect 3");
   emitter.onNext(Irrelevant.INSTANCE);
});

source.subscribe(e -> { /* Ignored. */ }, Throwable::printStackTrace);