Figuring out how to close an Input Stream

[John McMahon]

Hey folks,

I'm kind of baffled by this. I've done google searches and saw a thread on GitHub about something similar (which is where I sot the idea to use stdin.listen().cancel();, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

I haven't worked much with Streams, mostly Subscriptions and Futures in AngularDart,

I have a scenario where I have a command-line tool and I prompt the user for input and I have a timeout on that request largely due to unit tests failing if I don't find someway to end the prompt.

I am using stdin to wait for input from the user, a simply yes/no or y/n.

But when I run my tests, the first test fails at the end I have stdin.listen().cancel(); because the stream is "has already been listened to". If I remove this, the tests work fine, locally. But I feel like I should close the stream when I no longer need it.

############### Example ################
import 'dart:convert';
import 'dart:io';

String _userDecision = '';
final _inputStream = utf8.decoder.bind(stdin);

Future<void> _promptUser() async {
    _userDecision = await _inputStream
        .timeout(const Duration(seconds: 15), onTimeout: (sink) => sink.add('N'))
        .first;

    _userDecision = _userDecision.toLowerCase();

    if (_userDecision.isNotEmpty) {
        // Closing Stream once userDecision has a proper value
        await _inputStream.listen((event) => event).cancel();
        stdout.writeln('Stream closed');
    }
}

##################

[Chris Norman]

Hi,

You need to hold a reference to the subscription object.

Calling `listen` returns a StreamSubscription instance. You can (and should) call `cancel` on that.

As a tip, if you don't call cancel on it, but you're holding the reference, the analyzer will complain.

HTH,

Take care,

Chris Norman

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[John McMahon]

Thanks Chris, I'll give that a shot this evening.

[John McMahon]

Thanks Chris, that helped me properly cancel it. Now I refactored the example to include your guidance (see below). The issue I have now is how to stop listening once my criteria is met. As soon as the user responds, I'd like the subscription to quit out of the listen(). I have tried return, but I think because listen() returns void, that doesn't do anything.

I also tried throwing an exception thinking the onError parameter would serve as a catch to prevent it from propagating up the chain.

On Friday, March 11, 2022 at 6:29:12 AM UTC-5 chris....@googlemail.com wrote:

[John McMahon]

Updated Example:
import 'dart:async';

import 'dart:convert';
import 'dart:io';

String _userDecision = '';

Future<void> _promptUser() async {
    final StreamSubscription _inputStream = utf8.decoder.bind(stdin)
        .listen((input) {
            _userDecision = input.toLowerCase();

            if (_userDecision.isNotEmpty) {
            // I want the subscription to stop listening
               return;

            }
        });

       if (_userDecision.isNotEmpty) {
         // Closing Stream once userDecision has a proper value

          await _inputStream.cancel();
          stdout.writeln('Stream closed');