This is a presentation at JSConf Budapest on Asynchronous JavaScript at Netflix.
What's does a mouse drag event have in common with an Array of numbers?
The answer to this question may surprise you: they are both collections. This key insight holds the key to dramatically simplifying asynchronous programming in JavaScript. In this talk you will learn how you can use the familiar JavaScript Array#extras methods to create surprisingly expressive asynchronous programs. Using just a few functions, you will learn how to do the following:
- Declaratively build complex events out of simple events (ex. drag n' drop)
- Coordinate and sequence multiple Ajax requests
- Reactively update UIs in response to data changes
- Eliminate memory leaks caused by neglecting to unsubscribe from events
- Gracefully propagate and handle asynchronous exceptions
In this talk we'll be exploring the Reactive Extensions for JavaScript (RxJS) library which allows us to treat events as collections. We'll also contrast RxJS with Promises and other popular approaches to building asynchronous programs in JavaScript. We'll also dive into the future with RxJS with generators, ES7 asynchronous functions, and even query transformations.
We'll talk about how this approach was used at Netflix with great success with solving such problems as asynchronous search via autocomplete, scrolling, and infrastructure such as multiplexed WebSockets.
Reference Material:
Blog Posts:
- The introduction to Reactive Programming you've been missing
- Two Minute Introduction to RxJS
- Reactive Programming and MVC
- Visualizing Reactive Streams
Related Presentations:
- Async JavaScript at Netflix - Jafar Husain
- Reactive All The Things - Ben Lesh and Martin Gontovnikas
Contact Information:
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Matthew Podwysocki
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