Rxandroid What's the difference between SubscribeOn and ObserveOn

Question

I am just learning Rx-java and Rxandroid2 and I am just confused what is the major difference between in SubscribeOn and ObserveOn.

Answer 1

observeOn() simply changes the thread of all operators further Downstream. People usually have this misconception that observeOn also acts as upstream, but it doesn't.

The below example will explain it better..

Observable.just("Some string")                  // UI
       .map(str -> str.length())               // UI
       .observeOn(Schedulers.computation())   // Changing the thread
       .map(length -> 2 * length)            // Computation
       .subscribe(---)

subscribeOn() only influences the thread which is going to be used when Observable is going to get subscribed to and it will stay on it downstream.

Observable.just("Some String")              // Computation
  .map(str -> str.length())                // Computation
  .map(length -> 2 * length)              // Computation
  .subscribeOn(Schedulers.computation()) // -- changing the thread
  .subscribe(number -> Log.d("", "Number " + number));// Computation

Position does not matter (subscribeOn())

Why? Because it affects only the time of subscription.

Methods that obey the contact with subscribeOn

-> Basic example : Observable.create

All the work specified inside the create body will run on the thread specified in subscribeOn.

Another example: Observable.just,Observable.from or Observable.range

Note: All those methods accept values, so do not use blocking methods to create those values, as subscribeOn won't affect it.

If you want to use blocking functions, use

Observable.defer(() -> Obervable.just(blockingMenthod())));

Important Fact:

subscribeOn does not work with Subjects

Multiple subscribeOn:

If there are multiple instances of subscribeOn in the stream, only the first one has a practical effect.

Subscribe & subscribeOn

People think that subscribeOn has something to do with Observable.subscribe, but it doesn't have anything special to do with it. It only affects the subscription phase.

tl;dr If none of the above makes any sense, look at this code snippet

 Observable.just("Some string")                 
           .map(str -> str.length())              
           .observeOn(Schedulers.computation())   
           .map(length -> 2 * length)   
           .observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
           .subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
           .subscribe(---)

Observe an observable, perform the map function on the UI thread, now switch to a Computation Thread and perform map(length -> 2 * length) function now make sure you Observe the output on Main thread but perform all the tasks defined under subscribe() in a IO thread.

Source : Tomek Polański (Medium)