Sonic

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A blazingly fast JSON serializing & deserializing library, accelerated by JIT (just-in-time compiling) and SIMD (single-instruction-multiple-data).

Requirement

• Go: 1.18~1.26
  • Notice: Go1.24.0 is not supported due to the issue; please use a higher Go version or pass the build flag -ldflags="-checklinkname=0".
• OS: Linux / MacOS / Windows
• CPU: AMD64 / (ARM64, need go1.20 above)

Features

• Runtime object binding without code generation
• Complete APIs for JSON value manipulation
• Fast, fast, fast!

APIs

see go.dev

Benchmarks

For all sizes of json and all scenarios of usage, Sonic performs best.

• Medium (13KB, 300+ key, 6 layers)

goversion: 1.17.1
goos: darwin
goarch: amd64
cpu: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9880H CPU @ 2.30GHz
BenchmarkEncoder_Generic_Sonic-16                      32393 ns/op         402.40 MB/s       11965 B/op          4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Generic_Sonic_Fast-16                 21668 ns/op         601.57 MB/s       10940 B/op          4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Generic_JsonIter-16                   42168 ns/op         309.12 MB/s       14345 B/op        115 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Generic_GoJson-16                     65189 ns/op         199.96 MB/s       23261 B/op         16 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Generic_StdLib-16                    106322 ns/op         122.60 MB/s       49136 B/op        789 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Binding_Sonic-16                       6269 ns/op        2079.26 MB/s       14173 B/op          4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Binding_Sonic_Fast-16                  5281 ns/op        2468.16 MB/s       12322 B/op          4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Binding_JsonIter-16                   20056 ns/op         649.93 MB/s        9488 B/op          2 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Binding_GoJson-16                      8311 ns/op        1568.32 MB/s        9481 B/op          1 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Binding_StdLib-16                     16448 ns/op         792.52 MB/s        9479 B/op          1 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Generic_Sonic-16              6681 ns/op        1950.93 MB/s       12738 B/op          4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Generic_Sonic_Fast-16         4179 ns/op        3118.99 MB/s       10757 B/op          4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Generic_JsonIter-16           9861 ns/op        1321.84 MB/s       14362 B/op        115 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Generic_GoJson-16            18850 ns/op         691.52 MB/s       23278 B/op         16 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Generic_StdLib-16            45902 ns/op         283.97 MB/s       49174 B/op        789 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Binding_Sonic-16              1480 ns/op        8810.09 MB/s       13049 B/op          4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Binding_Sonic_Fast-16         1209 ns/op        10785.23 MB/s      11546 B/op          4 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Binding_JsonIter-16           6170 ns/op        2112.58 MB/s        9504 B/op          2 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Binding_GoJson-16             3321 ns/op        3925.52 MB/s        9496 B/op          1 allocs/op
BenchmarkEncoder_Parallel_Binding_StdLib-16             3739 ns/op        3486.49 MB/s        9480 B/op          1 allocs/op

BenchmarkDecoder_Generic_Sonic-16                      66812 ns/op         195.10 MB/s       57602 B/op        723 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Generic_Sonic_Fast-16                 54523 ns/op         239.07 MB/s       49786 B/op        313 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Generic_StdLib-16                    124260 ns/op         104.90 MB/s       50869 B/op        772 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Generic_JsonIter-16                   91274 ns/op         142.81 MB/s       55782 B/op       1068 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Generic_GoJson-16                     88569 ns/op         147.17 MB/s       66367 B/op        973 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Binding_Sonic-16                      32557 ns/op         400.38 MB/s       28302 B/op        137 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Binding_Sonic_Fast-16                 28649 ns/op         455.00 MB/s       24999 B/op         34 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Binding_StdLib-16                    111437 ns/op         116.97 MB/s       10576 B/op        208 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Binding_JsonIter-16                   35090 ns/op         371.48 MB/s       14673 B/op        385 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Binding_GoJson-16                     28738 ns/op         453.59 MB/s       22039 B/op         49 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Generic_Sonic-16             12321 ns/op        1057.91 MB/s       57233 B/op        723 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Generic_Sonic_Fast-16        10644 ns/op        1224.64 MB/s       49362 B/op        313 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Generic_StdLib-16            57587 ns/op         226.35 MB/s       50874 B/op        772 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Generic_JsonIter-16          38666 ns/op         337.12 MB/s       55789 B/op       1068 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Generic_GoJson-16            30259 ns/op         430.79 MB/s       66370 B/op        974 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Binding_Sonic-16              5965 ns/op        2185.28 MB/s       27747 B/op        137 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Binding_Sonic_Fast-16         5170 ns/op        2521.31 MB/s       24715 B/op         34 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Binding_StdLib-16            27582 ns/op         472.58 MB/s       10576 B/op        208 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Binding_JsonIter-16          13571 ns/op         960.51 MB/s       14685 B/op        385 allocs/op
BenchmarkDecoder_Parallel_Binding_GoJson-16            10031 ns/op        1299.51 MB/s       22111 B/op         49 allocs/op

BenchmarkGetOne_Sonic-16                                3276 ns/op        3975.78 MB/s          24 B/op          1 allocs/op
BenchmarkGetOne_Gjson-16                                9431 ns/op        1380.81 MB/s           0 B/op          0 allocs/op
BenchmarkGetOne_Jsoniter-16                            51178 ns/op         254.46 MB/s       27936 B/op        647 allocs/op
BenchmarkGetOne_Parallel_Sonic-16                      216.7 ns/op       60098.95 MB/s          24 B/op          1 allocs/op
BenchmarkGetOne_Parallel_Gjson-16                       1076 ns/op        12098.62 MB/s          0 B/op          0 allocs/op
BenchmarkGetOne_Parallel_Jsoniter-16                   17741 ns/op         734.06 MB/s       27945 B/op        647 allocs/op
BenchmarkSetOne_Sonic-16                               9571 ns/op         1360.61 MB/s        1584 B/op         17 allocs/op
BenchmarkSetOne_Sjson-16                               36456 ns/op         357.22 MB/s       52180 B/op          9 allocs/op
BenchmarkSetOne_Jsoniter-16                            79475 ns/op         163.86 MB/s       45862 B/op        964 allocs/op
BenchmarkSetOne_Parallel_Sonic-16                      850.9 ns/op       15305.31 MB/s        1584 B/op         17 allocs/op
BenchmarkSetOne_Parallel_Sjson-16                      18194 ns/op         715.77 MB/s       52247 B/op          9 allocs/op
BenchmarkSetOne_Parallel_Jsoniter-16                   33560 ns/op         388.05 MB/s       45892 B/op        964 allocs/op
BenchmarkLoadNode/LoadAll()-16                         11384 ns/op        1143.93 MB/s        6307 B/op         25 allocs/op
BenchmarkLoadNode_Parallel/LoadAll()-16                 5493 ns/op        2370.68 MB/s        7145 B/op         25 allocs/op
BenchmarkLoadNode/Interface()-16                       17722 ns/op         734.85 MB/s       13323 B/op         88 allocs/op
BenchmarkLoadNode_Parallel/Interface()-16              10330 ns/op        1260.70 MB/s       15178 B/op         88 allocs/op

• Small (400B, 11 keys, 3 layers)
• Large (635KB, 10000+ key, 6 layers)

See bench.sh for benchmark codes.

How it works

See INTRODUCTION.md.

Usage

Marshal/Unmarshal

Default behaviors are mostly consistent with encoding/json, except HTML escaping form (see Escape HTML) and SortKeys feature (optional support see Sort Keys) that is NOT in conformity to RFC8259.

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"

var data YourSchema
// Marshal
output, err := sonic.Marshal(&data)
// Unmarshal
err := sonic.Unmarshal(output, &data)

Streaming IO

Sonic supports decoding json from io.Reader or encoding objects into io.Writer, aims at handling multiple values as well as reducing memory consumption.

• encoder

var o1 = map[string]interface{}{
    "a": "b",
}
var o2 = 1
var w = bytes.NewBuffer(nil)
var enc = sonic.ConfigDefault.NewEncoder(w)
enc.Encode(o1)
enc.Encode(o2)
fmt.Println(w.String())
// Output:
// {"a":"b"}
// 1

• decoder

var o =  map[string]interface{}{}
var r = strings.NewReader(`{"a":"b"}{"1":"2"}`)
var dec = sonic.ConfigDefault.NewDecoder(r)
dec.Decode(&o)
dec.Decode(&o)
fmt.Printf("%+v", o)
// Output:
// map[1:2 a:b]

Use Number/Use Int64

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic/decoder"

var input = `1`
var data interface{}

// default float64
dc := decoder.NewDecoder(input)
dc.Decode(&data) // data == float64(1)
// use json.Number
dc = decoder.NewDecoder(input)
dc.UseNumber()
dc.Decode(&data) // data == json.Number("1")
// use int64
dc = decoder.NewDecoder(input)
dc.UseInt64()
dc.Decode(&data) // data == int64(1)

root, err := sonic.GetFromString(input)
// Get json.Number
jn := root.Number()
jm := root.InterfaceUseNumber().(json.Number) // jn == jm
// Get float64
fn := root.Float64()
fm := root.Interface().(float64) // jn == jm

Sort Keys

On account of the performance loss from sorting (roughly 10%), sonic doesn’t enable this feature by default. If your component depends on it to work (like zstd), Use it like this:

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"
import "github.com/bytedance/sonic/encoder"

// Binding map only
m := map[string]interface{}{}
v, err := encoder.Encode(m, encoder.SortMapKeys)

// Or ast.Node.SortKeys() before marshal
var root := sonic.Get(JSON)
err := root.SortKeys()

Escape HTML

On account of the performance loss (roughly 15%), sonic doesn’t enable this feature by default. You can use encoder.EscapeHTML option to open this feature (align with encoding/json.HTMLEscape).

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"

v := map[string]string{"&&":"<>"}
ret, err := Encode(v, EscapeHTML) // ret == `{"\u0026\u0026":{"X":"\u003c\u003e"}}`

Compact Format

Sonic encodes primitive objects (struct/map…) as compact-format JSON by default, except marshaling json.RawMessage or json.Marshaler: sonic ensures validating their output JSON but DO NOT compacting them for performance concerns. We provide the option encoder.CompactMarshaler to add compacting process.

Print Error

If there invalid syntax in input JSON, sonic will return decoder.SyntaxError, which supports pretty-printing of error position

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"
import "github.com/bytedance/sonic/decoder"

var data interface{}
err := sonic.UnmarshalString("[[[}]]", &data)
if err != nil {
    /* One line by default */
    println(e.Error()) // "Syntax error at index 3: invalid char\n\n\t[[[}]]\n\t...^..\n"
    /* Pretty print */
    if e, ok := err.(decoder.SyntaxError); ok {
        /*Syntax error at index 3: invalid char

            [[[}]]
            ...^..
        */
        print(e.Description())
    } else if me, ok := err.(*decoder.MismatchTypeError); ok {
        // decoder.MismatchTypeError is new to Sonic v1.6.0
        print(me.Description())
    }
}

Mismatched Types [Sonic v1.6.0]

If there a mismatch-typed value for a given key, sonic will report decoder.MismatchTypeError (if there are many, report the last one), but still skip wrong the value and keep decoding next JSON.

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"
import "github.com/bytedance/sonic/decoder"

var data = struct{
    A int
    B int
}{}
err := UnmarshalString(`{"A":"1","B":1}`, &data)
println(err.Error())    // Mismatch type int with value string "at index 5: mismatched type with value\n\n\t{\"A\":\"1\",\"B\":1}\n\t.....^.........\n"
fmt.Printf("%+v", data) // {A:0 B:1}

Ast.Node

Sonic/ast.Node is a completely self-contained AST for JSON. It implements serialization and deserialization both and provides robust APIs for obtaining and modification of generic data.

Get/Index

Search partial JSON by given paths, which must be non-negative integer or string, or nil

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"

input := []byte(`{"key1":[{},{"key2":{"key3":[1,2,3]}}]}`)

// no path, returns entire json
root, err := sonic.Get(input)
raw := root.Raw() // == string(input)

// multiple paths
root, err := sonic.Get(input, "key1", 1, "key2")
sub := root.Get("key3").Index(2).Int64() // == 3

Tip: since Index() uses offset to locate data, which is much faster than scanning like Get(), we suggest you use it as much as possible. And sonic also provides another API IndexOrGet() to underlying use offset as well as ensure the key is matched.

SearchOption

Searcher provides some options for user to meet different needs:

opts := ast.SearchOption{ CopyReturn: true ... }
val, err := sonic.GetWithOptions(JSON, opts, "key")

• CopyReturn Indicate the searcher to copy the result JSON string instead of refer from the input. This can help to reduce memory usage if you cache the results
• ConcurentRead Since ast.Node use Lazy-Load design, it doesn’t support Concurrently-Read by default. If you want to read it concurrently, please specify it.
• ValidateJSON Indicate the searcher to validate the entire JSON. This option is enabled by default, which slow down the search speed a little.

Set/Unset

Modify the json content by Set()/Unset()

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"

// Set
exist, err := root.Set("key4", NewBool(true)) // exist == false
alias1 := root.Get("key4")
println(alias1.Valid()) // true
alias2 := root.Index(1)
println(alias1 == alias2) // true

// Unset
exist, err := root.UnsetByIndex(1) // exist == true
println(root.Get("key4").Check()) // "value not exist"

Serialize

To encode ast.Node as json, use MarshalJson() or json.Marshal() (MUST pass the node’s pointer)

import (
    "encoding/json"
    "github.com/bytedance/sonic"
)

buf, err := root.MarshalJson()
println(string(buf))                // {"key1":[{},{"key2":{"key3":[1,2,3]}}]}
exp, err := json.Marshal(&root)     // WARN: use pointer
println(string(buf) == string(exp)) // true

APIs

• validation: Check(), Error(), Valid(), Exist()
• searching: Index(), Get(), IndexPair(), IndexOrGet(), GetByPath()
• go-type casting: Int64(), Float64(), String(), Number(), Bool(), Map[UseNumber|UseNode](), Array[UseNumber|UseNode](), Interface[UseNumber|UseNode]()
• go-type packing: NewRaw(), NewNumber(), NewNull(), NewBool(), NewString(), NewObject(), NewArray()
• iteration: Values(), Properties(), ForEach(), SortKeys()
• modification: Set(), SetByIndex(), Add()

Ast.Visitor

Sonic provides an advanced API for fully parsing JSON into non-standard types (neither struct not map[string]interface{}) without using any intermediate representation (ast.Node or interface{}). For example, you might have the following types which are like interface{} but actually not interface{}:

type UserNode interface {}

// the following types implement the UserNode interface.
type (
    UserNull    struct{}
    UserBool    struct{ Value bool }
    UserInt64   struct{ Value int64 }
    UserFloat64 struct{ Value float64 }
    UserString  struct{ Value string }
    UserObject  struct{ Value map[string]UserNode }
    UserArray   struct{ Value []UserNode }
)

Sonic provides the following API to return the preorder traversal of a JSON AST. The ast.Visitor is a SAX style interface which is used in some C++ JSON library. You should implement ast.Visitor by yourself and pass it to ast.Preorder() method. In your visitor you can make your custom types to represent JSON values. There may be an O(n) space container (such as stack) in your visitor to record the object / array hierarchy.

func Preorder(str string, visitor Visitor, opts *VisitorOptions) error

type Visitor interface {
    OnNull() error
    OnBool(v bool) error
    OnString(v string) error
    OnInt64(v int64, n json.Number) error
    OnFloat64(v float64, n json.Number) error
    OnObjectBegin(capacity int) error
    OnObjectKey(key string) error
    OnObjectEnd() error
    OnArrayBegin(capacity int) error
    OnArrayEnd() error
}

See ast/visitor.go for detailed usage. We also implement a demo visitor for UserNode in ast/visitor_test.go.

Compatibility

For developers who want to use sonic to meet different scenarios, we provide some integrated configs as sonic.API

• ConfigDefault: the sonic’s default config (EscapeHTML=false,SortKeys=false…) to run sonic fast meanwhile ensure security.
• ConfigStd: the std-compatible config (EscapeHTML=true,SortKeys=true…)
• ConfigFastest: the fastest config (NoQuoteTextMarshaler=true) to run on sonic as fast as possible. Sonic DOES NOT ensure to support all environments, due to the difficulty of developing high-performance codes. On non-sonic-supporting environment, the implementation will fall back to encoding/json. Thus below configs will all equal to ConfigStd.

Tips

Pretouch

Since Sonic uses golang-asm as a JIT assembler, which is NOT very suitable for runtime compiling, first-hit running of a huge schema may cause request-timeout or even process-OOM. For better stability, we advise using PretouchMany() for huge-schema or lantency-sensitive applications before Marshal()/Unmarshal().

import (
    "reflect"
    "github.com/bytedance/sonic"
    "github.com/bytedance/sonic/option"
)

func init() {
    var v1 HugeStruct1
    var v2 HugeStruct2

    // For most large types (nesting depth <= option.DefaultMaxInlineDepth)
    sonic.PretouchMany([]reflect.Type{reflect.TypeOf(v1), reflect.TypeOf(v2)},
        // If the type is too deep nesting (nesting depth > option.DefaultMaxInlineDepth),
        // you can set more recursive loops in Pretouch for fully sufficient JIT.
        option.WithCompileRecursiveDepth(loop),
        // For a large struct, try to set a smaller depth to reduce compiling time.
        option.WithCompileMaxInlineDepth(depth),
    )
}

Copy string

When decoding string values without any escaped characters, sonic references them from the origin JSON buffer instead of mallocing a new buffer to copy. This helps a lot for CPU performance but may leave the whole JSON buffer in memory as long as the decoded objects are being used. In practice, we found the extra memory introduced by referring JSON buffer is usually 20% ~ 80% of decoded objects. Once an application holds these objects for a long time (for example, cache the decoded objects for reusing), its in-use memory on the server may go up. - Config.CopyString/decoder.CopyString(): We provide the option for Decode() / Unmarshal() users to choose not to reference the JSON buffer, which may cause a decline in CPU performance to some degree.

• GetFromStringNoCopy(): For memory safety, sonic.Get() / sonic.GetFromString() now copies return JSON. If users want to get json more quickly and not care about memory usage, you can use GetFromStringNoCopy() to return a JSON directly referenced from source.

Pass string or []byte?

For alignment to encoding/json, we provide API to pass []byte as an argument, but the string-to-bytes copy is conducted at the same time considering safety, which may lose performance when the origin JSON is huge. Therefore, you can use UnmarshalString() and GetFromString() to pass a string, as long as your origin data is a string or nocopy-cast is safe for your []byte. We also provide API MarshalString() for convenient nocopy-cast of encoded JSON []byte, which is safe since sonic’s output bytes is always duplicated and unique.

Accelerate encoding.TextMarshaler

To ensure data security, sonic.Encoder quotes and escapes string values from encoding.TextMarshaler interfaces by default, which may degrade performance much if most of your data is in form of them. We provide encoder.NoQuoteTextMarshaler to skip these operations, which means you MUST ensure their output string escaped and quoted following RFC8259.

Better performance for generic data

In fully-parsed scenario, Unmarshal() performs better than Get()+Node.Interface(). But if you only have a part of the schema for specific json, you can combine Get() and Unmarshal() together:

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"

node, err := sonic.GetFromString(_TwitterJson, "statuses", 3, "user")
var user User // your partial schema...
err = sonic.UnmarshalString(node.Raw(), &user)

Even if you don’t have any schema, use ast.Node as the container of generic values instead of map or interface:

import "github.com/bytedance/sonic"

root, err := sonic.GetFromString(_TwitterJson)
user := root.GetByPath("statuses", 3, "user")  // === root.Get("status").Index(3).Get("user")
err = user.Check()

// err = user.LoadAll() // only call this when you want to use 'user' concurrently...
go someFunc(user)

Why? Because ast.Node stores its children using array:

• Array‘s performance is much better than Map when Inserting (Deserialize) and Scanning (Serialize) data;
• Hashing (map[x]) is not as efficient as Indexing (array[x]), which ast.Node can conduct on both array and object;
• Using Interface()/Map() means Sonic must parse all the underlying values, while ast.Node can parse them on demand.

CAUTION: ast.Node DOESN’T ensure concurrent security directly, due to its lazy-load design. However, you can call Node.Load()/Node.LoadAll() to achieve that, which may bring performance reduction while it still works faster than converting to map or interface{}

Ast.Node or Ast.Visitor?

For generic data, ast.Node should be enough for your needs in most cases.

However, ast.Node is designed for partially processing JSON string. It has some special designs such as lazy-load which might not be suitable for directly parsing the whole JSON string like Unmarshal(). Although ast.Node is better then map or interface{}, it’s also a kind of intermediate representation after all if your final types are customized and you have to convert the above types to your custom types after parsing.

For better performance, in previous case the ast.Visitor will be the better choice. It performs JSON decoding like Unmarshal() and you can directly use your final types to represents a JSON AST without any intermediate representations.

But ast.Visitor is not a very handy API. You might need to write a lot of code to implement your visitor and carefully maintain the tree hierarchy during decoding. Please read the comments in ast/visitor.go carefully if you decide to use this API.

Buffer Size

Sonic use memory pool in many places like encoder.Encode, ast.Node.MarshalJSON to improve performance, which may produce more memory usage (in-use) when server’s load is high. See issue 614. Therefore, we introduce some options to let user control the behavior of memory pool. See option package.

Faster JSON Skip

For security, sonic use FSM algorithm to validate JSON when decoding raw JSON or encoding json.Marshaler, which is much slower (1~10x) than SIMD-searching-pair algorithm. If user has many redundant JSON value and DO NOT NEED to strictly validate JSON correctness, you can enable below options:

• Config.NoValidateSkipJSON: for faster skipping JSON when decoding, such as unknown fields, json.Unmarshaler(json.RawMessage), mismatched values, and redundant array elements
• Config.NoValidateJSONMarshaler: avoid validating JSON when encoding json.Marshaler
• SearchOption.ValidateJSON: indicates if validate located JSON value when Get

JSON-Path Support (GJSON)

tidwall/gjson has provided a comprehensive and popular JSON-Path API, and a lot of older codes heavily relies on it. Therefore, we provides a wrapper library, which combines gjson’s API with sonic’s SIMD algorithm to boost up the performance. See cloudwego/gjson.

Community

Sonic is a subproject of CloudWeGo. We are committed to building a cloud native ecosystem.