Go: Efficient Marshalling & Unmarshalling

#go #programming #webdev #backend

If you like to see the video on this blog, then here is the link of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCID6eezGTU

As a developer it is our day-to-day job converting the data from the byte type (received from the network wire in the form of response) to your API response struct. In this blog we will see how we can do that efficiently and in a optimized manner(consume low CPU and Memory)

I will compare two libraries, SONIC and JSON and will perform the benchmark test for these two libraries and check which is optimal for our use case.

Test Criteria:
The payload is divided into three parts.

Small size struct
Medium size struct
Large size struct
Extra Large size struct

*About the operation: *
It will consist a method which is performing two operations, first marshalling and then unmarshalling.

func MarshallingUnmarshallingJSON(t1 []album) {
    var result []*album
    byteReponse, _ := json.Marshal(t1)
    json.Unmarshal(byteReponse, &result)
}

func MarshallingUnmarshallingSONIC(t1 []album) {
    var result []album
    byteReponse, _ := sonic.Marshal(t1)
    sonic.Unmarshal(byteReponse, &result)
}

Result array size lies in four categories, and the benchmark result is as follows:

func BenchmarkJSON(b *testing.B) {
    // Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large
    var input = []int{10, 50, 100, 400}

    for _, v := range input {
        albums := BuildResponse(v)
        b.Run(fmt.Sprintf("input_size_%d", v), func(b *testing.B) {
            for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
                MarshallingUnmarshallingJSON(albums)
            }
        })
    }
}

func BenchmarkSonic(b *testing.B) {
    // Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large
    var input = []int{10, 50, 100, 400}

    for _, v := range input {
        albums := BuildResponse(v)
        b.Run(fmt.Sprintf("input_size_%d", v), func(b *testing.B) {
            for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
                MarshallingUnmarshallingSONIC(albums)
            }
        })
    }
}

And the results after benchmark test are as follows:

SONIC

Name	Operation	ns/op	B/op	allocs/op
BenchmarkSonic/input_size_10-4	184616	10799 ns/op	3787 B/op	11 allocs/op
BenchmarkSonic/input_size_50-4	39327	31660 ns/op	15188 B/op	12 allocs/op
BenchmarkSonic/input_size_100-4	20794	55688 ns/op	34839 B/op	13 allocs/op
BenchmarkSonic/input_size_400-4	5713	213816 ns/op	130859 B/op	14 allocs/op

JSON

Name	Operation	ns/op	B/op	allocs/op
BenchmarkJSON/input_size_10-4	21874	57925 ns/op	2689 B/op	57 allocs/op
BenchmarkJSON/input_size_50-4	4152	273070 ns/op	12053 B/op	265 allocs/op
BenchmarkJSON/input_size_100-4	2942	390126 ns/op	24157 B/op	519 allocs/op
BenchmarkJSON/input_size_400-4	930	1406397 ns/op	96853 B/op	2025 allocs/op