aeson VS req

Compare aeson vs req and see what are their differences.

aeson

A fast Haskell JSON library (by haskell)

req

Req is a batteries-included HTTP client for Elixir. (by wojtekmach)
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aeson req
9 3
1,225 801
0.5% -
7.0 9.4
4 days ago 2 days ago
Haskell Elixir
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later -
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

aeson

Posts with mentions or reviews of aeson. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2022-10-24.

req

Posts with mentions or reviews of req. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-08-17.
  • How to implement a disk cache plugin for Elixir's Req HTTP client?
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Aug 2023
    > no error checking at all (I assume it just panics or exception?)

    In Elixir, bang functions per convention will raise on error. `get/2` will return error tuples allowing you to handle errors. In fact, get!/2 just calls get/2 and raises for you[^1].

    > no mention of JSON at all

    Req is the most "batteries included" Elixir HTTP lib out there. I can't speak for Wojtek, but I believe the goal was to make Req extremely easy to use in scripting or things like LiveBook without having to do much work. That being said, the automatic decoding is mentioned in the readme[^2] and the docs[^3].

    > if "body" is JSON, how do you even get the raw body, or can you?

    Per the docs[^3], you can either skip with a `:raw` option, or just build your own request using only the steps you want.

    > just seems over engineered/over fitted whatever you want to call it.

    Fair, but again, this library is designed to be on that end of the spectrum. There are plenty of other libraries further down the stack that you can use. I am partial to Finch[^4], upon which Req is built.

    To address the sibling comment about "Let it Crash", the language allows you to easily recover from crashes, but that is for resiliency, not error handling. In practice you would use the non-bang get/2, pattern match on the response, handle any errors, perhaps use Kernel.get_in/2 to safely traverse the map, etc. The example provided by the author is not "production ready".

    [^1]: https://github.com/wojtekmach/req/blob/v0.3.11/lib/req.ex#L3...

    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Aug 2023
    > no error checking at all

    Functions that raise always end in `!` in Elixir, or at least they should. Most have alternatives that return error tuples instead which you can pattern match on (this is what I recommend). You can read the docs for `get/2` (as opposed to `get!/2` which raises) here: https://hexdocs.pm/req/Req.html#get/2.

    A common pattern is for the `!` version to call the version that doesn't raise, check the result, and raise on error, which is the case here: https://github.com/wojtekmach/req/blob/9de30de0df481ee557ccc...

    > and if "body" is JSON, how do you even get the raw body, or can you?

    You would set `decode: false` when calling `get!/2: https://hexdocs.pm/req/Req.html#new/1. You can also set this as configuration with https://hexdocs.pm/req/Req.html#default_options/1.

    As a closing note I'll mention that Req is intended to be a very high-level, scripting-friendly requests library, similar to Requests in Python. If you don't want conveniences like Req provides, you can either turn them off or use something different, like Finch (which Req is based on, https://github.com/sneako/finch). Other than Req and Finch I'm personally only familiar with HTTPoison, which is significantly older than all of the libraries derived from Mint (like Finch and Req, https://github.com/elixir-mint/mint) but still works. There are many others though, like Gun and Tesla and such.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing aeson and req you can also consider the following projects:

aeson-coerce

alternative-vector - Use vectors with many and some, instead of lists

aeson-utils - Utilities for working with aeson.

aeson-applicative - define To/From JSON instances from one applicative definition

req - An HTTP client library

tmp-postgres - Create temporary postgres instances

android-lint-summary - Prettier display of Android Lint issues

gc-monitoring-wai - a wai application to show `GHC.Stats.GCStats`

jsaddle - JavaScript interface that works with GHCJS or GHC

inquire

aeson-lens - Lens of Aeson

clock-extras