# easyjson [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/mailru/easyjson.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/mailru/easyjson) [![Go Report Card](https://goreportcard.com/badge/github.com/mailru/easyjson)](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/mailru/easyjson)

Package easyjson provides a fast and easy way to marshal/unmarshal Go structs
to/from JSON without the use of reflection. In performance tests, easyjson
outperforms the standard `encoding/json` package by a factor of 4-5x, and other
JSON encoding packages by a factor of 2-3x.

easyjson aims to keep generated Go code simple enough so that it can be easily
optimized or fixed. Another goal is to provide users with the ability to
customize the generated code by providing options not available with the
standard `encoding/json` package, such as generating "snake_case" names or
enabling `omitempty` behavior by default.

## Usage
```sh
# install
go get -u github.com/mailru/easyjson/...

# run
easyjson -all <file>.go
```

The above will generate `<file>_easyjson.go` containing the appropriate marshaler and
unmarshaler funcs for all structs contained in `<file>.go`.

Please note that easyjson requires a full Go build environment and the `GOPATH`
environment variable to be set. This is because easyjson code generation
invokes `go run` on a temporary file (an approach to code generation borrowed
from [ffjson](https://github.com/pquerna/ffjson)).

## Options
```txt
Usage of easyjson:
  -all
    	generate marshaler/unmarshalers for all structs in a file
  -build_tags string
        build tags to add to generated file
  -gen_build_flags string
        build flags when running the generator while bootstrapping
  -byte
        use simple bytes instead of Base64Bytes for slice of bytes
  -leave_temps
    	do not delete temporary files
  -no_std_marshalers
    	don't generate MarshalJSON/UnmarshalJSON funcs
  -noformat
    	do not run 'gofmt -w' on output file
  -omit_empty
    	omit empty fields by default
  -output_filename string
    	specify the filename of the output
  -pkg
    	process the whole package instead of just the given file
  -snake_case
    	use snake_case names instead of CamelCase by default
  -lower_camel_case
        use lowerCamelCase instead of CamelCase by default
  -stubs
    	only generate stubs for marshaler/unmarshaler funcs
  -disallow_unknown_fields
        return error if some unknown field in json appeared
  -disable_members_unescape
        disable unescaping of \uXXXX string sequences in member names
```

Using `-all` will generate marshalers/unmarshalers for all Go structs in the
file excluding those structs whose preceding comment starts with `easyjson:skip`.
For example: 

```go
//easyjson:skip
type A struct {}
```

If `-all` is not provided, then only those structs whose preceding
comment starts with `easyjson:json` will have marshalers/unmarshalers
generated. For example:

```go
//easyjson:json
type A struct {}
```

Additional option notes:

* `-snake_case` tells easyjson to generate snake\_case field names by default
  (unless overridden by a field tag). The CamelCase to snake\_case conversion
  algorithm should work in most cases (ie, HTTPVersion will be converted to
  "http_version").

* `-build_tags` will add the specified build tags to generated Go sources.

* `-gen_build_flags` will execute the easyjson bootstapping code to launch the 
  actual generator command with provided flags. Multiple arguments should be
  separated by space e.g. `-gen_build_flags="-mod=mod -x"`.

## Structure json tag options

Besides standart json tag options like 'omitempty' the following are supported:

* 'nocopy' - disables allocation and copying of string values, making them
  refer to original json buffer memory. This works great for short lived
  objects which are not hold in memory after decoding and immediate usage.
  Note if string requires unescaping it will be processed as normally.
* 'intern' - string "interning" (deduplication) to save memory when the very
  same string dictionary values are often met all over the structure.
  See below for more details.

## Generated Marshaler/Unmarshaler Funcs

For Go struct types, easyjson generates the funcs `MarshalEasyJSON` /
`UnmarshalEasyJSON` for marshaling/unmarshaling JSON. In turn, these satisfy
the `easyjson.Marshaler` and `easyjson.Unmarshaler` interfaces and when used in
conjunction with `easyjson.Marshal` / `easyjson.Unmarshal` avoid unnecessary
reflection / type assertions during marshaling/unmarshaling to/from JSON for Go
structs.

easyjson also generates `MarshalJSON` and `UnmarshalJSON` funcs for Go struct
types compatible with the standard `json.Marshaler` and `json.Unmarshaler`
interfaces. Please be aware that using the standard `json.Marshal` /
`json.Unmarshal` for marshaling/unmarshaling will incur a significant
performance penalty when compared to using `easyjson.Marshal` /
`easyjson.Unmarshal`.

Additionally, easyjson exposes utility funcs that use the `MarshalEasyJSON` and
`UnmarshalEasyJSON` for marshaling/unmarshaling to and from standard readers
and writers. For example, easyjson provides `easyjson.MarshalToHTTPResponseWriter`
which marshals to the standard `http.ResponseWriter`. Please see the [GoDoc
listing](https://godoc.org/github.com/mailru/easyjson) for the full listing of
utility funcs that are available.

## Controlling easyjson Marshaling and Unmarshaling Behavior

Go types can provide their own `MarshalEasyJSON` and `UnmarshalEasyJSON` funcs
that satisfy the `easyjson.Marshaler` / `easyjson.Unmarshaler` interfaces.
These will be used by `easyjson.Marshal` and `easyjson.Unmarshal` when defined
for a Go type.

Go types can also satisfy the `easyjson.Optional` interface, which allows the
type to define its own `omitempty` logic.

## Type Wrappers

easyjson provides additional type wrappers defined in the `easyjson/opt`
package. These wrap the standard Go primitives and in turn satisfy the
easyjson interfaces.

The `easyjson/opt` type wrappers are useful when needing to distinguish between
a missing value and/or when needing to specifying a default value. Type
wrappers allow easyjson to avoid additional pointers and heap allocations and
can significantly increase performance when used properly.

## Memory Pooling

easyjson uses a buffer pool that allocates data in increasing chunks from 128
to 32768 bytes. Chunks of 512 bytes and larger will be reused with the help of
`sync.Pool`. The maximum size of a chunk is bounded to reduce redundant memory
allocation and to allow larger reusable buffers.

easyjson's custom allocation buffer pool is defined in the `easyjson/buffer`
package, and the default behavior pool behavior can be modified (if necessary)
through a call to `buffer.Init()` prior to any marshaling or unmarshaling.
Please see the [GoDoc listing](https://godoc.org/github.com/mailru/easyjson/buffer)
for more information.

## String interning

During unmarshaling, `string` field values can be optionally
[interned](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_interning) to reduce memory
allocations and usage by deduplicating strings in memory, at the expense of slightly
increased CPU usage.

This will work effectively only for `string` fields being decoded that have frequently
the same value (e.g. if you have a string field that can only assume a small number
of possible values).

To enable string interning, add the `intern` keyword tag to your `json` tag on `string`
fields, e.g.:

```go
type Foo struct {
  UUID  string `json:"uuid"`         // will not be interned during unmarshaling
  State string `json:"state,intern"` // will be interned during unmarshaling
}
```

## Issues, Notes, and Limitations

* easyjson is still early in its development. As such, there are likely to be
  bugs and missing features when compared to `encoding/json`. In the case of a
  missing feature or bug, please create a GitHub issue. Pull requests are
  welcome!

* Unlike `encoding/json`, object keys are case-sensitive. Case-insensitive
  matching is not currently provided due to the significant performance hit
  when doing case-insensitive key matching. In the future, case-insensitive
  object key matching may be provided via an option to the generator.

* easyjson makes use of `unsafe`, which simplifies the code and
  provides significant performance benefits by allowing no-copy
  conversion from `[]byte` to `string`. That said, `unsafe` is used
  only when unmarshaling and parsing JSON, and any `unsafe` operations
  / memory allocations done will be safely deallocated by
  easyjson. Set the build tag `easyjson_nounsafe` to compile it
  without `unsafe`.

* easyjson is compatible with Google App Engine. The `appengine` build
  tag (set by App Engine's environment) will automatically disable the
  use of `unsafe`, which is not allowed in App Engine's Standard
  Environment. Note that the use with App Engine is still experimental.

* Floats are formatted using the default precision from Go's `strconv` package.
  As such, easyjson will not correctly handle high precision floats when
  marshaling/unmarshaling JSON. Note, however, that there are very few/limited
  uses where this behavior is not sufficient for general use. That said, a
  different package may be needed if precise marshaling/unmarshaling of high
  precision floats to/from JSON is required.

* While unmarshaling, the JSON parser does the minimal amount of work needed to
  skip over unmatching parens, and as such full validation is not done for the
  entire JSON value being unmarshaled/parsed.

* Currently there is no true streaming support for encoding/decoding as
  typically for many uses/protocols the final, marshaled length of the JSON
  needs to be known prior to sending the data. Currently this is not possible
  with easyjson's architecture.
  
* easyjson parser and codegen based on reflection, so it won't work on `package main` 
  files, because they cant be imported by parser.

## Benchmarks

Most benchmarks were done using the example
[13kB example JSON](https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/search/tweets)
(9k after eliminating whitespace). This example is similar to real-world data,
is well-structured, and contains a healthy variety of different types, making
it ideal for JSON serialization benchmarks.

Note:

* For small request benchmarks, an 80 byte portion of the above example was
  used.

* For large request marshaling benchmarks, a struct containing 50 regular
  samples was used, making a ~500kB output JSON.

* Benchmarks are showing the results of easyjson's default behaviour,
  which makes use of `unsafe`.

Benchmarks are available in the repository and can be run by invoking `make`.

### easyjson vs. encoding/json

easyjson is roughly 5-6 times faster than the standard `encoding/json` for
unmarshaling, and 3-4 times faster for non-concurrent marshaling. Concurrent
marshaling is 6-7x faster if marshaling to a writer.

### easyjson vs. ffjson

easyjson uses the same approach for JSON marshaling as
[ffjson](https://github.com/pquerna/ffjson), but takes a significantly
different approach to lexing and parsing JSON during unmarshaling. This means
easyjson is roughly 2-3x faster for unmarshaling and 1.5-2x faster for
non-concurrent unmarshaling.

As of this writing, `ffjson` seems to have issues when used concurrently:
specifically, large request pooling hurts `ffjson`'s performance and causes
scalability issues. These issues with `ffjson` can likely be fixed, but as of
writing remain outstanding/known issues with `ffjson`.

easyjson and `ffjson` have similar performance for small requests, however
easyjson outperforms `ffjson` by roughly 2-5x times for large requests when
used with a writer.

### easyjson vs. go/codec

[go/codec](https://github.com/ugorji/go) provides
compile-time helpers for JSON generation. In this case, helpers do not work
like marshalers as they are encoding-independent.

easyjson is generally 2x faster than `go/codec` for non-concurrent benchmarks
and about 3x faster for concurrent encoding (without marshaling to a writer).

In an attempt to measure marshaling performance of `go/codec` (as opposed to
allocations/memcpy/writer interface invocations), a benchmark was done with
resetting length of a byte slice rather than resetting the whole slice to nil.
However, the optimization in this exact form may not be applicable in practice,
since the memory is not freed between marshaling operations.

### easyjson vs 'ujson' python module

[ujson](https://github.com/esnme/ultrajson) is using C code for parsing, so it
is interesting to see how plain golang compares to that. It is important to note
that the resulting object for python is slower to access, since the library
parses JSON object into dictionaries.

easyjson is slightly faster for unmarshaling and 2-3x faster than `ujson` for
marshaling.

### Benchmark Results

`ffjson` results are from February 4th, 2016, using the latest `ffjson` and go1.6.
`go/codec` results are from March 4th, 2016, using the latest `go/codec` and go1.6.

#### Unmarshaling

| lib      | json size | MB/s | allocs/op | B/op  |
|:---------|:----------|-----:|----------:|------:|
| standard | regular   | 22   | 218       | 10229 |
| standard | small     | 9.7  | 14        | 720   |
|          |           |      |           |       |
| easyjson | regular   | 125  | 128       | 9794  |
| easyjson | small     | 67   | 3         | 128   |
|          |           |      |           |       |
| ffjson   | regular   | 66   | 141       | 9985  |
| ffjson   | small     | 17.6 | 10        | 488   |
|          |           |      |           |       |
| codec    | regular   | 55   | 434       | 19299 |
| codec    | small     | 29   | 7         | 336   |
|          |           |      |           |       |
| ujson    | regular   | 103  | N/A       | N/A   |

#### Marshaling, one goroutine.

| lib       | json size | MB/s | allocs/op | B/op  |
|:----------|:----------|-----:|----------:|------:|
| standard  | regular   | 75   | 9         | 23256 |
| standard  | small     | 32   | 3         | 328   |
| standard  | large     | 80   | 17        | 1.2M  |
|           |           |      |           |       |
| easyjson  | regular   | 213  | 9         | 10260 |
| easyjson* | regular   | 263  | 8         | 742   |
| easyjson  | small     | 125  | 1         | 128   |
| easyjson  | large     | 212  | 33        | 490k  |
| easyjson* | large     | 262  | 25        | 2879  |
|           |           |      |           |       |
| ffjson    | regular   | 122  | 153       | 21340 |
| ffjson**  | regular   | 146  | 152       | 4897  |
| ffjson    | small     | 36   | 5         | 384   |
| ffjson**  | small     | 64   | 4         | 128   |
| ffjson    | large     | 134  | 7317      | 818k  |
| ffjson**  | large     | 125  | 7320      | 827k  |
|           |           |      |           |       |
| codec     | regular   | 80   | 17        | 33601 |
| codec***  | regular   | 108  | 9         | 1153  |
| codec     | small     | 42   | 3         | 304   |
| codec***  | small     | 56   | 1         | 48    |
| codec     | large     | 73   | 483       | 2.5M  |
| codec***  | large     | 103  | 451       | 66007 |
|           |           |      |           |       |
| ujson     | regular   | 92   | N/A       | N/A   |

\* marshaling to a writer,
\*\* using `ffjson.Pool()`,
\*\*\* reusing output slice instead of resetting it to nil

#### Marshaling, concurrent.

| lib       | json size | MB/s | allocs/op | B/op  |
|:----------|:----------|-----:|----------:|------:|
| standard  | regular   | 252  | 9         | 23257 |
| standard  | small     | 124  | 3         | 328   |
| standard  | large     | 289  | 17        | 1.2M  |
|           |           |      |           |       |
| easyjson  | regular   | 792  | 9         | 10597 |
| easyjson* | regular   | 1748 | 8         | 779   |
| easyjson  | small     | 333  | 1         | 128   |
| easyjson  | large     | 718  | 36        | 548k  |
| easyjson* | large     | 2134 | 25        | 4957  |
|           |           |      |           |       |
| ffjson    | regular   | 301  | 153       | 21629 |
| ffjson**  | regular   | 707  | 152       | 5148  |
| ffjson    | small     | 62   | 5         | 384   |
| ffjson**  | small     | 282  | 4         | 128   |
| ffjson    | large     | 438  | 7330      | 1.0M  |
| ffjson**  | large     | 131  | 7319      | 820k  |
|           |           |      |           |       |
| codec     | regular   | 183  | 17        | 33603 |
| codec***  | regular   | 671  | 9         | 1157  |
| codec     | small     | 147  | 3         | 304   |
| codec***  | small     | 299  | 1         | 48    |
| codec     | large     | 190  | 483       | 2.5M  |
| codec***  | large     | 752  | 451       | 77574 |

\* marshaling to a writer,
\*\* using `ffjson.Pool()`,
\*\*\* reusing output slice instead of resetting it to nil
