How to ignore error and continue infinite stream?

If you just want to ignore the error inside the flatMap without returning an element do this:

flatMap(item -> 
    restService.getSomething(item).onErrorResumeNext(Observable.empty())
);

You may want to use one of the error handling operators.

• onErrorResumeNext( ) — instructs an Observable to emit a sequence of items if it encounters an error
• onErrorReturn( ) — instructs an Observable to emit a particular item when it encounters an error
• onExceptionResumeNext( ) — instructs an Observable to continue emitting items after it encounters an exception (but not another variety of throwable)
• retry( ) — if a source Observable emits an error, resubscribe to it in the hopes that it will complete without error
• retryWhen( ) — if a source Observable emits an error, pass that error to another Observable to determine whether to resubscribe to the source

Especialy retry and onExceptionResumeNext look promising in your case.

mRestService.postLocations(locations) emit one item, then complete. If an error occur, then it emit the error, which complete the stream.

As you call this method in a flatMap, the error continue to your "main" stream, and then your stream stops.

What you can do is to transform your error into another item (as described here : https://stackoverflow.com/a/28971140/476690 ), but not on your main stream (as I presume you already tried) but on the mRestService.postLocations(locations).

This way, this call will emit an error, that will be transformed to an item/another observable and then complete. (without calling onError).

On a consumer view, mRestService.postLocations(locations) will emit one item, then complete, like if everything succeed.

mSubscription = reactiveLocationProvider.getUpdatedLocation(mLocationRequest)
        .buffer(50)
        .flatMap(locations -> mRestService.postLocations(locations).onErrorReturn((e) -> Collections.emptyList()) // can't throw exception
        .subscribeOn(Schedulers.newThread())
        .observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
        .subscribe();