fasthttp VS go-json

Someone made a benchmark of serialization libraries in go [1], and I was surprised to see gobs is one of the slowest ones, specially for decoding. I suspect part of the reason is that the API doesn't not allow reusing decoders [2]. From my explorations it seems like both JSON [3], message-pack [4] and CBOR [5] are better alternatives.

By the way, in Go there are a like a million JSON encoders because a lot of things in the std library are not really coded for maximum performance but more for easy of usage, it seems. Perhaps this is the right balance for certain things (ex: the http library, see [6]).

There are also a bunch of libraries that allow you to modify a JSON file "in place", without having to fully deserialize into structs (ex: GJSON/SJSON [7] [8]). This sounds very convenient and more efficient that fully de/serializing if we just need to change the data a little.

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1: https://github.com/alecthomas/go_serialization_benchmarks

2: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/29766#issuecomment-45492...

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3: https://github.com/goccy/go-json

4: https://github.com/vmihailenco/msgpack

5: https://github.com/fxamacker/cbor

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6: https://github.com/valyala/fasthttp#faq

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7: https://github.com/tidwall/gjson

8: https://github.com/tidwall/sjson

Fasthttp is one of the most powerful webservers written in Go, I'm working on a project that makes it possible to use it as a webserver for Python.

IDE: use whatever make you productive. I personally use vscode. VCS: git, as golang communities use github heavily as base for many libraries. AFAIK Linter: use staticcheck for linting as it looks like mostly used linting tool in go, supported by many also. In Vscode it will be recommended once you install go plugin. Libraries/Framework: actually the standard libraries already included many things you need, decent enough for your day-to-day development cycles(e.g. `net/http`). But here are things for extra: - Struct fields validator: validator - Http server lib: chi router , httprouter , fasthttp (for non standard http implementations, but fast) - Web Framework: echo , gin , fiber , beego , etc - Http client lib: most already covered by stdlib(net/http), so you rarely need extra lib for this, but if you really need some are: resty - CLI: cobra - Config: godotenv , viper - DB Drivers: sqlx , postgre , sqlite , mysql - nosql: redis , mongodb , elasticsearch - ORM: gorm , entgo , sqlc(codegen) - JS Transpiler: gopherjs - GUI: fyne - grpc: grpc - logging: zerolog - test: testify , gomock , dockertest - and many others you can find here

The best example I can give you is https://github.com/nutsdb/nutsdb it’s great project that got me started, one thing one should know is Go is different “yep” so there’re some coding habits that may bite you in Go and the Go compiler won’t correct you, you wanna learn about optimizations, unsafe usage check out https://github.com/valyala/fasthttp (note this is deep the rabbit hole), wanna learn concurrency check out ants https://github.com/panjf2000/ants with a little aid from “Go by example” you’re good to go

As I said in another comment, I think net/http is a good cautionary tale here. It was designed to be easy to use, and then grew organically, but performance never seems to have been a goal. fasthttp solves this, but bifurcates the ecosystem and passes on those costs to everyone who uses it. If net/http had been designed with performance in mind, this could have been avoided. net/http can't be removed or optimized, so this is a situation the Go ecosystem is effectively stuck with forever. At best, a faster version may end up in the std lib, just like netip is more modern and faster than net but the ecosystem is still bifurcated and adoption of the new package has been slow.

Fiber, while has a lot of batteries included and decent for many use cases, is known for having corner cases (because of internals like fasthttp) like https://github.com/valyala/fasthttp/issues/622

For go -> you can actually get away with the standard json encoding package. Or if you want a slightly better one, I prefer goccy/go-json

Someone made a benchmark of serialization libraries in go [1], and I was surprised to see gobs is one of the slowest ones, specially for decoding. I suspect part of the reason is that the API doesn't not allow reusing decoders [2]. From my explorations it seems like both JSON [3], message-pack [4] and CBOR [5] are better alternatives.

By the way, in Go there are a like a million JSON encoders because a lot of things in the std library are not really coded for maximum performance but more for easy of usage, it seems. Perhaps this is the right balance for certain things (ex: the http library, see [6]).

There are also a bunch of libraries that allow you to modify a JSON file "in place", without having to fully deserialize into structs (ex: GJSON/SJSON [7] [8]). This sounds very convenient and more efficient that fully de/serializing if we just need to change the data a little.

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1: https://github.com/alecthomas/go_serialization_benchmarks

2: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/29766#issuecomment-45492...

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3: https://github.com/goccy/go-json

4: https://github.com/vmihailenco/msgpack

5: https://github.com/fxamacker/cbor

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6: https://github.com/valyala/fasthttp#faq

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7: https://github.com/tidwall/gjson

8: https://github.com/tidwall/sjson

Drop-in replacement for the stdlib JSON package: https://github.com/goccy/go-json

go stdlib json encoding/decoding is incredibly slow, not sure for how much longer because there are drop in replacements now that I think are just as strict and feature parity.

3rd party JSON libraries could help if you were comparing JSON. https://github.com/goccy/go-json

However, I understand the code that is generated is super optimized. For example, rather than use a router, it does a static code generated router. Rather than use goccy/go-json, it does manual marshalling.

Minimal dependencies: julienschmidt/httprouter and goccy/go-json

I suggested using https://github.com/goccy/go-json at my work, since its a drop in replacement for the standard lib, but there are people who apprehensive. In my opinion the performance gains are significant to justify adoption. But I'd like your input.

go-json for encoding/decoding