Benchmarks

The files in this directory provide different benchmarks to ensure that Granola is performant, or to test its performance under different scenarios.

The output is from running them on a development machine, so it should be considered relative, and I encourage you to run them in different platforms.

How to run

Install dependencies for the benchmarks by running dep install from the benchmarks directory.

Run each file normally. For example: ruby ./alternatives.rb

MultiJson

MultiJson provides a way of unifying multiple libraries and systems to use the same JSON rendering backend by configuring it in one place. However, this comes at a cost.

At the time of writing:

Warming up --------------------------------------
               plain    39.265k i/100ms
          multi_json     4.064k i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
               plain    495.215k (± 3.4%) i/s -      2.474M in   5.001015s
          multi_json     41.297k (± 9.0%) i/s -    207.264k in   5.066882s

Comparison:
               plain:   495214.7 i/s
          multi_json:    41297.2 i/s - 11.99x  slower

Alternatives

Granola is not the only way of managing the logic around generating specific responses for an API. Commonly used in ruby are ActiveModel::Serializers, Jbuilder, and more recently Fast JSON API.

ActiveModel::Serializers offers a ton of features, which are great if you need them, but as you can see from this benchmark, are also pretty encumbering when you don't.

Jbuilder, a tool maintained by the Rails team, takes a completely different approach to the problem, by considering that JSON rendering is a responsibility of the template layer, and using templates to generate JSON responses.

Fast JSON API is a tool maintained by Netflix, which was built to be similar to ActiveModel::Serializers, but fast. As you can see from the below benchmarks, it's comparable to Granola in performance. I personally am not a fan of adding mroe cognitive load with complex DSLs that you have to learn and understand, so I still prefer Granola's simplicity. But I'm obviously biased :)

At the time of writing:

Warming up --------------------------------------
            jbuilder     1.397k i/100ms
        active_model   497.000  i/100ms
        fast_jsonapi     3.122k i/100ms
             granola     3.083k i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
            jbuilder     13.690k (± 3.7%) i/s -     68.453k in   5.007391s
        active_model      4.378k (±15.1%) i/s -     21.371k in   5.044318s
        fast_jsonapi     26.016k (±13.9%) i/s -    128.002k in   5.028594s
             granola     27.124k (±14.1%) i/s -    132.569k in   5.000011s

Comparison:
             granola:    27123.9 i/s
        fast_jsonapi:    26016.0 i/s - same-ish: difference falls within error
            jbuilder:    13689.9 i/s - 1.98x  slower
        active_model:     4377.9 i/s - 6.20x  slower