How to populate the store and sequentially await return using Redux Observable? - redux-observable

Question

I am attempting to use Redux Observable to call an action to fetch some data, wait for its return, then fetch some more data that relies on it.
I have an epic which populates a store from a fetch FetchTodos. This listens for the FETCH_TODOS action and then calls my todos API and populates {todos: [] } =
I also have a comments section in my store todoComments. However, I would like to only populate todoComments once FETCH_TODOS has returned and populated the store.
In imperative code, this might look like:
let todos = await api.get('/todos');
await dispatch("FETCH_TODO_COMPLETE", todos)
let firstId = getState().todos[0].id
let comments = await api.get(`/todos/${firstId}/comments')
await dispatch("FETCH_COMMENTS_COMPLETE", { todo_id: firstId, comments})
The closest I saw to this was this issue in the Redux Observable Repo, but I could not understand how to do this efficiently. This is a pretty common scenario for me.
I would like to reuse as much code as possible. In this example, I may dispatch FETCH_TODOS from multiple components.
How would i accomplish this with Redux-Observable?

Answer 1

Based on our conversation in the comments:
In redux-observable, you can sequence things in numerous ways. You could do it all in one epic using normal RxJS, or you could split them into multiple ones. If you split them, the subsequent epic would listen for the signal that the previous one has completed its task. Something like this:
// this assumes you make your `api.get` helper return an Observable
// instead of a Promise which is highly advisable.
// If it doesn't, you could do:
// Observable.from(api.get('/url'))
// but Promises are not truly cancellable which can cause max
// concurrent connections issues
const fetchTodosEpic = action$ =>
action$.ofType('FETCH_TODOS')
.switchMap(() =>
api.get('/todos')
.map(todos => ({
type: 'FETCH_TODOS_COMPLETE',
todos
}))
);
const fetchComments = action$ =>
action$.ofType('FETCH_TODOS_COMPLETE')
.switchMap(({ todos }) =>
api.get(`/todos/${todos[0].id}/comments`)
.map(comments => ({
type: 'FETCH_COMMENTS_COMPLETE',
comments
}))
);