Once in a while, one of your observables will crash and leave behind a useless crash log. Something like this:

java . lang . NullPointerException : The mapper function returned a null value . at io . reactivex . internal . functions . ObjectHelper . requireNonNull ( ObjectHelper . java : 39 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableMap $MapObserver . onNext ( ObservableMap . java : 58 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableScalarXMap $ScalarDisposable . run ( ObservableScalarXMap . java : 246 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableJust . subscribeActual ( ObservableJust . java : 35 ) at io . reactivex . Observable . subscribe ( Observable . java : 10179 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableMap . subscribeActual ( ObservableMap . java : 32 ) at io . reactivex . Observable . subscribe ( Observable . java : 10179 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableSubscribeOn $ 1 . run ( ObservableSubscribeOn . java : 39 ) at io . reactivex . Scheduler $ 1 . run ( Scheduler . java : 134 ) at io . reactivex . internal . schedulers . ScheduledRunnable . run ( ScheduledRunnable . java : 59 ) at io . reactivex . internal . schedulers . ScheduledRunnable . call ( ScheduledRunnable . java : 51 ) at java . util . concurrent . FutureTask . run ( FutureTask . java : 237 ) at java . util . concurrent . ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor $ScheduledFutureTask . run ( ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor . java : 269 ) at java . util . concurrent . ThreadPoolExecutor . runWorker ( ThreadPoolExecutor . java : 1113 ) at java . util . concurrent . ThreadPoolExecutor $Worker . run ( ThreadPoolExecutor . java : 588 ) at java . lang . Thread . run ( Thread . java : 818 )

Just look at all these sweet io.reactivex and java packages. There is no single link to your code! No hints on where the chain was created or who is the subscriber.

Now, it’s probably time to abandon whatever you were doing and spend the rest of your day in an exciting task of bisecting your code in hopes of isolating the crash. You are lucky if this one is easy to reproduce!

This kind of problem happens quite regularly. For example, the crash log above was produced by this code:

just ( "a string" ). map { null } . subscribeOn ( Schedulers . io ()) . subscribe () }

This code models a pretty common situation: you’ve forgotten that something is nullable and return it from your map operator. This can happen with your Retrofit observables when you are interested in only a part of the response, and that part happened to be null.

Generally, just run some of your observables on a separate thread (like you do it with Retrofit observables), and you are in a danger zone. RxJava returns call stack only for the thread that crashed, and if the said call stack doesn’t contain your code, then, you are out of luck.

A similar thing can happen if you use the same observable (or observable creation code, like Retrofit calls) in several places. In this case, you may be unable to identify which chain have just crashed even if you were lucky enough to identify the crashed observable itself.

You may think: “Sounds like it may be useful to see where the crashed observable was created.” Can you do that? Maybe you can add this kind of information to the crash log?

Breadcrumb exception

Well, actually you can. Just decorate all your chains with this extension function:

inline fun < T > Observable < T >. dropBreadcrumb (): Observable < T > { val breadcrumb = BreadcrumbException () return this . onErrorResumeNext { error : Throwable -> throw CompositeException ( error , breadcrumb ) } } class BreadcrumbException : Exception ()

Here is an example:

just ( "a string" ). map { null } . subscribeOn ( Schedulers . io ()) . dropBreadcrumb () . subscribe ()

Then you’ll start to see crash logs like this:

io . reactivex . exceptions . CompositeException : 2 exceptions occurred . at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableOnErrorNext $OnErrorNextObserver . onError ( ObservableOnErrorNext . java : 94 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableSubscribeOn $SubscribeOnObserver . onError ( ObservableSubscribeOn . java : 68 ) at io . reactivex . internal . observers . BasicFuseableObserver . onError ( BasicFuseableObserver . java : 100 ) at io . reactivex . internal . observers . BasicFuseableObserver . fail ( BasicFuseableObserver . java : 110 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableMap $MapObserver . onNext ( ObservableMap . java : 60 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableScalarXMap $ScalarDisposable . run ( ObservableScalarXMap . java : 246 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableJust . subscribeActual ( ObservableJust . java : 35 ) at io . reactivex . Observable . subscribe ( Observable . java : 10179 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableMap . subscribeActual ( ObservableMap . java : 32 ) at io . reactivex . Observable . subscribe ( Observable . java : 10179 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableSubscribeOn $ 1 . run ( ObservableSubscribeOn . java : 39 ) at io . reactivex . Scheduler $ 1 . run ( Scheduler . java : 134 ) at io . reactivex . internal . schedulers . ScheduledRunnable . run ( ScheduledRunnable . java : 59 ) at io . reactivex . internal . schedulers . ScheduledRunnable . call ( ScheduledRunnable . java : 51 ) at java . util . concurrent . FutureTask . run ( FutureTask . java : 237 ) at java . util . concurrent . ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor $ScheduledFutureTask . run ( ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor . java : 269 ) at java . util . concurrent . ThreadPoolExecutor . runWorker ( ThreadPoolExecutor . java : 1113 ) at java . util . concurrent . ThreadPoolExecutor $Worker . run ( ThreadPoolExecutor . java : 588 ) at java . lang . Thread . run ( Thread . java : 818 ) ComposedException 1 : java . lang . NullPointerException : The mapper function returned a null value . at io . reactivex . internal . functions . ObjectHelper . requireNonNull ( ObjectHelper . java : 39 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableMap $MapObserver . onNext ( ObservableMap . java : 58 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableScalarXMap $ScalarDisposable . run ( ObservableScalarXMap . java : 246 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableJust . subscribeActual ( ObservableJust . java : 35 ) at io . reactivex . Observable . subscribe ( Observable . java : 10179 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableMap . subscribeActual ( ObservableMap . java : 32 ) at io . reactivex . Observable . subscribe ( Observable . java : 10179 ) at io . reactivex . internal . operators . observable . ObservableSubscribeOn $ 1 . run ( ObservableSubscribeOn . java : 39 ) at io . reactivex . Scheduler $ 1 . run ( Scheduler . java : 134 ) at io . reactivex . internal . schedulers . ScheduledRunnable . run ( ScheduledRunnable . java : 59 ) at io . reactivex . internal . schedulers . ScheduledRunnable . call ( ScheduledRunnable . java : 51 ) at java . util . concurrent . FutureTask . run ( FutureTask . java : 237 ) at java . util . concurrent . ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor $ScheduledFutureTask . run ( ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor . java : 269 ) at java . util . concurrent . ThreadPoolExecutor . runWorker ( ThreadPoolExecutor . java : 1113 ) at java . util . concurrent . ThreadPoolExecutor $Worker . run ( ThreadPoolExecutor . java : 588 ) at java . lang . Thread . run ( Thread . java : 818 ) Caused by: test . com . sandbox_kotlin . BreadcrumbException at test . com . sandbox_kotlin . MainActivityKt . dropBreadcrumb ( MainActivity . kt : 75 ) at test . com . sandbox_kotlin . MainActivity . onCreate ( MainActivity . kt : 23 ) at android . app . Activity . performCreate ( Activity . java : 6237 ) at android . app . Instrumentation . callActivityOnCreate ( Instrumentation . java : 1107 ) at android . app . ActivityThread . performLaunchActivity ( ActivityThread . java : 2369 ) at android . app . ActivityThread . handleLaunchActivity ( ActivityThread . java : 2476 ) at android . app . ActivityThread .- wrap11 ( ActivityThread . java ) at android . app . ActivityThread $H . handleMessage ( ActivityThread . java : 1344 ) at android . os . Handler . dispatchMessage ( Handler . java : 102 )

Not excited? Look at this line:

at test . com . sandbox_kotlin . MainActivity . onCreate ( MainActivity . kt : 23 )

This is our code! You can just click there now and get to the place where the crashed chain was created.

The reason why dropBreadcrumb() function is inline is because this way it will produce cleaner call stack. Thanks to Roman who made this suggestion in the comments.

How does it work?

If you look at the code, then it’s pretty obvious that it just creates an exception with a call stack pointing to the point where the chain was created — or, to be more precise, where dropBreadcrumb() was applied. Then it decorates each error emitted by the chain with this exception.

Can I do it with Java?

For people like me, who are still forced to do Java, here is a Java example:

public final class DropBreadcrumb < T > implements ObservableTransformer < T , T > { @Override public ObservableSource < T > apply ( Observable < T > upstream ) { final BreadcrumbException breadcrumb = new BreadcrumbException (); return upstream . onErrorResumeNext ( new Function < Throwable , ObservableSource <? extends T >>() { @Override public ObservableSource <? extends T > apply ( Throwable throwable ) throws Exception { throw new CompositeException ( throwable , breadcrumb ); } }); } } class BreadcrumbException extends Exception { }

Here is how you use it:

Observable . just ( "a string" ). map (...) . subscribeOn ( Schedulers . io ()) . compose ( new DropBreadcrumb < String >()) . subscribe ();

Can I have this as a default behavior?

You can do it with plugins like Traceur and RxJava2Extensions. They create a call stack for each subscription. While it may seem extremely handy, don’t forget that observables subscribe to each other. So, for each observable in your chains, a call stack will be created. Probably you want to do it only in debug mode since creating a call stack is a costly operation and abusing it may lead to unexpected performance issues.

Dropping breadcrumbs here and there though shouldn’t be a problem, and you can use them with release builds.

If you use Kotlin, you can combine dropBreadcrumb() and subscribe() into a single extension function.

More about error handling in RxJava