# Vert.x Reactive Streams Integration

Reactive Streams is an initiative to provide a standard for asynchronous stream processing with non-blocking back pressure on the JVM.

This library provides an implementation of reactive streams for Vert.x.

Vert.x provides its own mechanisms for handling streams of data and pumping them with back pressure from one to another using the `io.vertx.core.streams.ReadStream`, `io.vertx.core.streams.WriteStream` and `io.vertx.core.streams.Pump`. Please see the Vert.x core manual for more information on Vert.x streams.

This library provides implementations of read stream and write stream which also act as reactive streams publishers and subscribers. This allows us to treat any reactive streams publisher or subscriber and deal with it like any other Vert.x read or write stream.

## Using Vert.x Reactive Streams

To use Vert.x Reactive Streams, add the following dependency to the dependencies section of your build descriptor:

- Maven (in your `pom.xml`):

    <dependency>
      <groupId>io.vertx</groupId>
      <artifactId>vertx-reactive-streams</artifactId>
      <version>3.8.3</version>
    </dependency>

- Gradle (in your `build.gradle` file):

    compile io.vertx:vertx-reactive-streams:3.8.3

## Reactive Read Stream

We provide an implementation of the Vert.x `ReadStream` interface with `ReactiveReadStream` which also implements a reactive streams `Subscriber`.

You can pass an instance of this to any reactive streams `Publisher` (e.g. a Publisher from Akka) and then you will be able to read from that just like any other Vert.x `ReadStream` (e.g. use a `Pump` to pump it to a `WriteStream`.

Here’s an example of taking a publisher from some other reactive streams implementation (e.g. Akka) and pumping that stream to the body of a server side HTTP response. This will handle back pressure automatically.

    ReactiveReadStream<Buffer> rrs = ReactiveReadStream.readStream();

    // Subscribe the read stream to the publisher
    otherPublisher.subscribe(rrs);

    // Pump from the read stream to the http response
    Pump pump = Pump.pump(rrs, response);

    pump.start();

## Reactive Write Stream

We also provide an implementation of the Vert.x `WriteStream` interface with `ReactiveWriteStream` which also implements a reactive streams `Publisher`. You can take any reactive streams `Subscriber` (e.g. a Subscriber from Akka) and then you will be able* to write to it like any other Vert.x `WriteStream`. (e.g. use a `Pump` to pump it from a `ReadStream`).

You use `pause`, `resume`, and `writeQueueFull`, as you would with any Vert.x read stream to handle your back pressure. This is automatically translated internally into the reactive streams method of propagating back pressure (requesting more items).

Here’s an example of taking a subscriber from some other reactive streams implementation and pumping the body of a server side HTTP request to that subscriber. This will handle back pressure automatically.

    ReactiveWriteStream<Buffer> rws = ReactiveWriteStream.writeStream(vertx);

    // Subscribe the other subscriber to the write stream
    rws.subscribe(otherSubscriber);

    // Pump the http request to the write stream
    Pump pump = Pump.pump(request, rws);

    pump.start();