typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks VS MikroORM

Has been heavily optimized, both in terms of its types and runtime performance. Even including the static parser, many types are about an order of magnitude more efficient than equivalent Zod. Early results show it as marginally faster than any validator currently published to typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks, not including more complex cases where (2) would give ArkType a much more significant advantage.

Zod is a bit of an underdog but it is not fast, AJV which is slightly more common can validate and generate types too but requires using JSON syntax, TypeBox offers familiar syntax to Zod while still being JSON syntax in the background.

First, they're not fast (runtime type checking benchmarks).

Aha, so you're using a library in Java for this. You know about libraries in TS for this, there are plenty of them btw, but you don't use them because it's so easy. Express has `any` type for `req.body` because authors don't care about this either and it's so easy. And TypeScript is the one to blame in that you prefer to work with `any` type for incoming data rather than validating it.

It is so much faster than Zod that Zod basically doesn't show, https://moltar.github.io/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks/ and according to bundlejs, https://bundlejs.com/?q=zod%2Czod%2C%40sinclair%2Ftypebox&treeshake=%5B*%5D%2C%5B%7B+default+%7D%5D%2C%5B*%5D&config=%7B%22analysis%22%3Atrue%7D, it is even smaller. I genuinely have no clue why Zod is this popular in 2023.

TypeBox is a bit different to other libraries in this space where it's mostly intended to be used with a auxiliary JSON Schema validator. Although it provides a built in JSON Schema compiler (which is currently the fastest (not-AOT) runtime validator available for JavaScript today), it's equally intended to be used with validators like Ajv (or any other standards compliant validator)

I do plan to add some direct comparisons to https://github.com/moltar/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks as well but haven't had a chance yet.

I think it's more of a case of the extremely low performance bar that's been set by the status quo (for even the simplest of validation structures). There's been a lot of focus on the TS type inference, and less on the runtime performance (which actually matters more as it does reduce operational costs). It probably wouldn't be such an issue if the performance was reasonable, but I mean here's the full breakdown https://moltar.github.io/typescript-runtime-type-benchmarks/.

I found a benchmark for runtime performance, but I haven't found any for intellisense/editor performance.

In my usual NodeJS tech stack, which includes GraphQL, NestJS, SQL (predominantly PostgreSQL with MikroORM), I encountered these limitations. To overcome them, I've developed a new stack utilizing Rust, which still offers some ease of development:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/mikro-orm - 44 issues

Mikro-ORM is a TypeScript ORM that focuses on simplicity and efficiency. It supports various SQL databases and MongoDB. Mikro-ORM is known for its simplicity and developer-friendly APIs. It provides a concise syntax for defining data models and relationships, making it easy to use.

I found MikroORM [0] to be quite reasonable if you're in the TS ecosystem already. It was also easy to do custom, raw queries, and really just felt like it wasn't in the way.

[0] https://mikro-orm.io/

It also does code generation into its own module, so good luck with hoisting in a monorepo where you want multiple independent prisma schemas. MikroORM[1] is a much better alternative to Prisma in my opinion but any ORM carries some form of baggage.

[1] https://mikro-orm.io/

More about v6 development can be found here.

I recommend looking at https://mikro-orm.io/