Vert.x adjustments

Along with the transformation of RxJava, the rest of the reactive libraries and frameworks vendors have also started adopting the Reactive Streams specification. Following the specification, Vert.x included an additional module which provides support for the Reactive Streams API. The following example demonstrates this addition:

...                                                                // (1)
.requestHandler(request -> {                                       //

   ReactiveReadStream<Buffer> rrs =                                // (2)
      ReactiveReadStream.readStream();                             //
   HttpServerResponse response = request.response();               //

   Flowable<Buffer> logs = Flowable                                // (3)
      .fromPublisher(logsService.stream())                         //
      .map(Buffer::buffer)                                         //
      .doOnTerminate(response::end);                               //

   logs.subscribe(rrs);                                            // (4)

   response.setStatusCode(200);                                    // (5)
   response.setChunked(true);                                      //
   response.putHeader("Content-Type", "text/plain");               //
   response.putHeader("Connection", "keep-alive");                 //

   Pump.pump(rrs, response)                                        // (6)
       .start();                                                   //
})
...

The key is as follows:

1. This is the request handler declaration. This is a generic request handler that allows handling any requests sent to the server. 
2. This is the Subscriber and HTTP response declaration. Here ReactiveReadStream implements both org.reactivestreams.Subscriber and ReadStream, which allows transforming any Publisher to the source of data compatible with a Vert.x API. 
3. This is the processing flow declaration. In that example, we refer to the new Reactive Streams-based LogsService interface, and to write a functional transformation of the elements in the stream we use the Flowable API from RxJava 2.x.
4. This is the subscription stage. Once the processing flow is declared, we may subscribe ReactiveReadStream to the Flowable.
5. This is a response preparation stage.
6. This is the final response being sent to the client. Here, the Pump class plays an important role in a sophisticated mechanism of backpressure control to prevent the underlying WriteStream buffer from getting too full.

As we can see, Vert.x does not provide a fluent API for writing a stream of element processing. However, it provides an API that allows converting any Publisher to the Vert.x API, keeping the sophisticated backpressure management from Reactive Streams in place.