[dbohdan] 2017-02-03: This benchmark compares the speed with which various [JSON] libraries for Tcl can extract a deeply nested string value from a http://mtgjson.com/%|%large JSON blob%|% (circa 18 MiB). The comparison may help you choose one out of a growing number of similar JSON-parsing libraries for Tcl, but, as any microbenchmark, it has a limited scope. Libraries may be faster or slower under different circumstances.
** How to run the benchmark **
Install [Git], [jq], Tcl 8.6, [Tcllib] and (optionally) [wiki-reaper]. Install the Tcl extensions [rl_json], SQLite with [JSON1], [tcl-duktape] and [yajl-tcl]. Then run the POSIX shell commands below.
======none
mkdir jsonbench
cd jsonbench
git clone https://github.com/dbohdan/jimhttp
curl -sf -o AllSets.json.zip https://mtgjson.com/json/AllSets.json.zip
# or wget https://mtgjson.com/json/AllSets.json.zip
unzip AllSets.json.zip
rm AllSets.json.zip
# Instead of running the next command you can manually copy the code from the
# "Code" section of this wiki page and save it as jsonbench.tcl.
wiki-reaper 48500 3 | tee jsonbench.tcl
tclsh jsonbench.tcl
======
** Sample results **
These results are from running the benchmark on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux%|%WSL%|% (Ubuntu 16.04) on a http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html#rk368%|%Phenom II X4 955%|% CPU with no CPU-intensive tasks running in the background. The benchmark used version version 3.8.1 (Jan 23, 2017) of the MTG JSON data set. The jq version was 1.5.
*** 5 iterations ***
======none
Package versions:
Tcl -- 8.6.5
Tcllib json -- 1.3.3
duktape -- 0.3.0
jimhttp json -- 2.1.0
rl_json -- 0.9.7
sqlite3 -- 3.18.0
yajltcl -- 1.6.2
Running the benchmark with 5 iterations for each library
jq: 1062 ms
tcl-duktape: 1670 ms
jimhttp JSON: 37941 ms
rl_json: 99 ms
Tcllib JSON: 25261 ms
SQLite JSON1: 58 ms
yajl-tcl: 284 ms
======
*** 20 iterations ***
======none
Package versions:
Tcl -- 8.6.5
Tcllib json -- 1.3.3
duktape -- 0.3.0
jimhttp json -- 2.1.0
rl_json -- 0.9.7
sqlite3 -- 3.18.0
yajltcl -- 1.6.2
Running the benchmark with 20 iterations for each library
jq: 1051 ms
tcl-duktape: 1634 ms
jimhttp JSON: 38772 ms
rl_json: 28 ms
Tcllib JSON: 26073 ms
SQLite JSON1: 57 ms
yajl-tcl: 284 ms
======
** Code **
======
#! /usr/bin/env tclsh
# version 0.4.0
package require fileutil
puts {Package versions:}
puts "Tcl -- [package require Tcl]"
puts "Tcllib json -- [package require json]"
puts "duktape -- [package require duktape]"
package require duktape::oo
source jimhttp/json.tcl
puts "jimhttp json -- $::json::version"
puts "rl_json -- [package require rl_json]"
puts "sqlite3 -- [package require sqlite3]"
puts "yajltcl -- [package require yajltcl]"
puts {}
proc ms timeResult {
return [expr {round([lindex $timeResult 0] / 1000.0)}]
}
proc benchmark {command data times result} {
return [ms [time {
set actualResult [$command $data]
if {$actualResult ne $result} {error "bad result: \"$actualResult\""}
} $times]]
}
proc jq data {
return [exec jq -r {.INV.cards[68].flavor} << $data]
}
proc duktape data {
set j [::duktape::oo::JSON new $::duk $data]
set result [$j get INV cards 68 flavor]
$j destroy
return $result
}
proc jimhttp-json data {
return [dict get [::json::parse $data] INV cards 68 flavor]
}
proc rl_json data {
return [::rl_json::json get $data INV cards 68 flavor]
}
proc tcllib-json data {
set parsed [::json::json2dict $data]
return [dict get [lindex [dict get $parsed INV cards] 68] flavor]
}
proc sqlite3-json1 data {
return [lindex [::sq3 eval {
select json_extract($data, '$.INV.cards[68].flavor')
}] 0]
}
proc yajltcl data {
set parsed [::yajl::json2dict $data]
return [dict get [lindex [dict get $parsed INV cards] 68] flavor]
}
proc report {displayName n} {
puts [format {%-13s %6u ms} ${displayName}: $n]
}
proc main {} {
set times 20
set value {Children claim no two feathers are exactly the same color,\
then eagerly gather them for proof.}
set sets [::fileutil::cat AllSets.json]
puts "Running the benchmark with $times iterations for each library"
report jq [benchmark jq $sets $times $value]
set ::duk [::duktape::oo::Duktape new]
report tcl-duktape [benchmark duktape $sets $times $value]
$::duk destroy
report {jimhttp JSON} [benchmark jimhttp-json $sets $times $value]
report rl_json [benchmark rl_json $sets $times $value]
report {Tcllib JSON} [benchmark tcllib-json $sets $times $value]
sqlite3 ::sq3 :memory:
::sq3 enable_load_extension 1
report {SQLite JSON1} [benchmark sqlite3-json1 $sets $times $value]
::sq3 close
report yajl-tcl [benchmark yajltcl $sets $times $value]
}
main
======
** Discussion **
'''[ak] - 2017-05-01 23:44:31'''
Note, while basic Tcllib is pure Tcl you can use [critcl] and `make tcllibc` to generate a C-based accelerator for various parts of Tcllib, including the json package.
It might be interesting to see how much this accelerator helps the json extractor.
----
[dbohdan] 2018-03-31: It is worth noting that the [jimhttp] JSON parser is a lot slower in Tcl 8.6 than it is in [Jim Tcl]. The following benchmark shows the difference. To run the benchmark script I used a [http://kitcreator.rkeene.org/kits/building/39e6cc5c2814e7753a9149aa0c74fc1056cc4935/%|%Tcl 8.6.8 Tclkit] built with [KitCreator] and a [Jim Tcl] [https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl/releases/tag/0.77%|%v0.77] binary built locally with GCC 5.4.0 with the default `CFLAGS` given by its `configure` script: `-g -O2 -fno-unwind-tables -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables`.
======
$ du -h AllSets.json # v3.14 Mar 7, 2018 -- much larger than v3.8.1 above
29M AllSets.json
$ cat bench.tcl
puts "$::tcl_platform(engine) [info patchlevel]"
set ch [open $argv]; set json [read $ch]; close $ch
source json.tcl
set i 0
puts [time {::json::parse $json; puts [incr i]} 5]
$ for bin in /tmp/benchkits/tclkit /tmp/benchkits/jimtcl/jimsh; \
do $bin bench.tcl AllSets.json; done
Tcl 8.6.8
1
2
3
4
5
148498381.0 microseconds per iteration
Jim 0.77
1
2
3
4
5
25020679 microseconds per iteration
======
That's a 6x difference. The same idoes not truhappen ofwith [Tcllib JSON] hacked up to work in Jim Tcl.
======
$ diff -r /usr/share/tcltk/tcllib1.17/json/json.tcl /tmp/tcllib-json/json.tcl
9d8
< package require Tcl 8.4
32c31
< if {![package vsatisfies [package provide Tcl] 8.4]} {return 0}
---
> return 0
diff -r /usr/share/tcltk/tcllib1.17/json/json_tcl.tcl /tmp/tcllib-json/json_tcl.tcl
12,14d11
< if {![package vsatisfies [package provide Tcl] 8.5]} {
< package require dict
< }
$ cat bench2.tcl
puts "$::tcl_platform(engine) [info patchlevel]"
set ch [open $argv]; set json [read $ch]; close $ch
source /tmp/tcllib-json/json.tcl
set i 0
puts [time {::json::json2dict $json; puts [incr i]} 5]
$ for bin in /tmp/benchkits/tclkit /tmp/benchkits/jimtcl/jimsh; \
do $bin bench2.tcl AllSets.json; done
Tcl 8.6.8
1
2
3
4
5
27883525.0 microseconds per iteration
Jim 0.77
1
2
3
4
5
29755740 microseconds per iteration
======
<<categories>>Data Serialization Format | Performance