Different subscription behaviour for mongo collections

[mattiLeBlanc]

If was playing with my subscription of a mongo collection, doing search on a third party api that resulted in inserting records in my mongo collection. However, I noticed that I didn't see my subscription working in my template when I trigger the mongo insert while using one method, but it did work with another method.

Again for me this is confusing, what is the best practice and/or is this behaviour on purpose?

This subscription auto updates when I add new records manually or trigger the api that inserts mongo records:

export class PodcastSearchComponent implements OnInit {
  episodeSubscription: Subscription;
  episodes$: Observable<Episode[]>;

  constructor(
  ) {}

  ngOnInit() {
     this.episodeSubscription = MeteorObservable.subscribe( 'episodes' ).subscribe();
    this.episodes$ = Episodes.find();
);

This option looks a bit weird, since you setup a subscription, but we don't use a subject (rxjs) and then we just seem to bind Episodes.find(), which is a rxjs mongo observable collection at this time, to the episodes$ observable.

The second method:
This subscription DOESN'T auto update, only loads one time on page load:

export class PodcastSearchComponent implements OnInit {
  episodes$: Observable<Episode[]>;

  constructor(
  ) {}

  ngOnInit() {
    this.episodes$ = MeteorObservable.subscribe( 'episodes' ).pipe( switchMap( () => Episodes.find() ) );

I ran into the second method in one of the examples and it looked elegant, but it has some different behaviour than the first method.
I would have expected this to work since the RxJS Mongo observable collection that was setup. However it doesn't autorun, or detect changes in my situation.

Should I also use the second method for setting up a subscription?

I hope my questions aren't annoying, I am re-exploring Meteor after 2 years of absence (just pure angular 4 during that time) and I really want it to work with Angular 6.

***Update: at one point I thought it had something to do with ChangeDetectionStrategy.OnPush but it didn't matter turning that off.

[ardatan]

Try to use this way;
Subscription is triggered once it's ready, and the collection observable is independently triggered by Meteor's tracker.
Please let me know if it is fixed or still occured

ngOnInit(){
  this.episodesSubscription = MeteorObservable.subscribe('episodes').subscribe(() => {
     this.episodes$ = Episodes.find();
  })
}
ngOnDestroy(){
  if(this.episodesSubscription){
    this.episodesSubscription.unsubscribe();
  }
}

[mattiLeBlanc]

I moved my subscription to a service, since I want a singleton watching the episode change and then call the redux action, which is using an @effect that calls the getAll function returning the episodes.
When I use the Autorun, I can manually add and remove items to mongo and the list will update.
When I use your slightly altered suggestion (not assigning it episodes$) it doesn't autorun. It could be because I am not assigning it the observable episodes$.

@Injectable()
export class EpisodesService {

  episodeSubscription: Subscription;

  constructor(
    private store: Store<fromStore.PodcastsState>,
  ) {
  //   this.episodeSubscription = MeteorObservable.subscribe('episodes').subscribe(() => {
  //     Episodes.find().fetch();
  //     this.store.dispatch( new fromStore.LoadEpisodes() );
  //  })

    this.episodeSubscription = MeteorObservable.subscribe( 'episodes' ).subscribe();
    MeteorObservable.autorun().subscribe(() => {
      // triger autorun
      Episodes.find().fetch();
      this.store.dispatch( new fromStore.LoadEpisodes() );
    });
  }

  getAll(): Observable<Episode[]> {
    return of( Episodes.find().fetch() );
  }

}

[ardatan]

Maybe you should try mergeMap or somehow.
Or you can use Tracker.autorun and Meteor.subscribe to get data inside autorun callback and trigger redux without dealing with RxJS.

[mattiLeBlanc]

hmm, it doesn't help that I don't entirely know what I am doing.
This seems to be the only one that works

 this.episodeSubscription = MeteorObservable.subscribe( 'episodes' ).subscribe();
 MeteorObservable.autorun().subscribe(() => {
      // triger autorun
      Episodes.find().fetch();
      this.store.dispatch( new fromStore.LoadEpisodes() );
    });

Adding a mergeMap in a pipe() after the subscription didn't make it reRun.
Only the Episodes.find().fetch() inside the autorun triggers a rerun and then does a dispatch of my action.

[mattiLeBlanc]

@ardatan can I ask you something off topic: Do you think Angular, Meteor and NGRX is a bit of overkill?
I could do the whole state management in Mongo right? Then the client mini-mongo would be the same as an NgRX Store with pubsub etc.

I though NGRX was the way to go, but I hear a lot of people in the react world mention graphql instead of redux.
Would it be better for me to look at Apollo?