Angular 2 – Return data directly from an Observable

Since http calls and the like are async, you get an Observable instead of a synchronous value returned. You have to subscribe to it, and in the callback in there you get the data. There is no way around that.

One option would be to place your logic in the subscribe call

getSomething() {
    return this._restService.addRequest('object', 'method').run()
        .subscribe(
            res => {
                // do something here
                res;
            },
            err => {
                console.error(err);
            }
        );
}

But the way I like doing it is to add a callback, to inject the logic from outside (maybe a component, maybe another service):

getSomething(callback: (data) => void) {
    return this._restService.addRequest('object', 'method').run()
        .subscribe(
            res => {
                callback(res);
            },
            err => {
                console.error(err);
            }
        );
}

And in your component or wherever:

this._yourService.getSomething((data) => {
    // do something here
    console.log(data);
});