Combine Overview

The StreamChat framework ships with Combine publishers out of the box. Combine publishers are exposed by StreamChat controller classes, these publishers allow you to observe data and to build your own views.

Each controller exposes publishers based on the kind of data they control and allow you to observe changes. You can find examples on how to build your own views using these publishers here.

Using the Combine extensions of Controllers

When using combine extensions of the controllers, you need to call the synchronize method on your controller instance before starting to observe the publishers. This is done to avoid the side-effects from initialization and to make sure that the controller is ready to be used.

for example a channel controller needs to watch a channel before its publisher can emit changes.

It's a best practice to pass the synchronize a completion block to handle error cases. However, error handling is optional, and you can use synchronize as a fire and forget method.

    /// ...
    controller.synchronize { error in
        /// something did not work with the controller setup
        if error != nil {
            log.assertionFailure(error!)
            return
        }
    }
    /// ...