Background
Kefir.js is a Reactive Programming library for JavaScript inspired by Bacon.js and RxJS, with focus on high performance and low memory usage.
Kefir works with objects called observables.
observables could be two things; a stream, or a property (not to be confused with a Javascript object property)
Streams
A stream is a sequence of events made available over time. In other words, it can be seen as an array of events. Each index in this array describes a point in time.
For example, let's say that some user goes to a webpage and click-spam on a button. In this stream, at t = 1, a mouse click event may occur, and at t = 2, another mouse click event might occur. So on and so forth.
Property
A property is an observable, just like a stream, but a property has the concept of a current value. Using the example above, when some user goes to a webpage and click-spam on a button, at t = 1, a property may have 1 mouse click as its current value, and at t = 2, it may have 2 mouse clicks as its current value.
So what's the difference between a property and a stream?
- Properties may represent some value.
- When properties are given a subscriber, the callback into the subscriber is called immediately or synchronously. Therefore, the timing that the subscriber callbacks are executed are different between properties and streams.
What is a subscriber?
A subscriber adds side effects to the property or stream.
For example, given this function call:
foobar.onValue(fn)
.onValue is a subscriber method that adds a callback function called fn to any values that are generated (at some point in time) on foobar, which is an observable (i.e., a property or a stream).