Table of Contents

About

Reactive Programming is an event-driven programmation based on the observer / subscriber pattern via an event loop.

They are reactive implementing a reactor pattern.

It means that:

  • functions create events
  • functions subscribe to event

In another word, a change of state is propagated to the system where functions can react to them.

Event example

Backend

Some backend example events are:

  • a timer has fired
  • some data has arrived on a socket,
  • some data has been read from the disk
  • an exception has occurred
  • an HTTP server has received a request

Frontend

Some frontend example events are:

  • the user has clicked on a button
  • the user has swiped
  • the user has used a key
  • the scroll is at the end of the page

Example

Imperative Programming vs Reactive programming

In an imperative programming setting, the expression a:=b+c would mean that a is being assigned the result of b+c in the instant the expression is evaluated, and later, the values of b and c can be changed with no effect on the value of a.

On the other hand, in reactive programming, the value of a is automatically updated whenever the values of b or c change, without the program having to re-execute the statement a:=b+c to determine the presently assigned value of a.

Application

Reactive Application are event-driven data application.

Example of reactive / event driven data application:

Model

Implementation

Most reactive system are implemented via an event loop.

Manifesto

https://www.reactivemanifesto.org/ 1)

1)
wiki/Reactive_programming