The Pythonian

All about the Python Programming Language

Fast deserialization in Python via Metaoptimize

Interesting article which goes into a lengthy comparison of protobuf, JSON, and pickel.

Summary:

For quickly deserializing data in Python, use cjson. Simplejson is mysteriously slow on certain installations.

Joseph Turian

March 23, 2009 at 11:33 pm

I am the author of the blog post.

Update (20090324): According to Extra Cheese, cjson 1.0.5 has an incompatibility with simplejson in processing slashes. A fix is available from Matt Billenstein. However, Dan Pascu, the author of cjson, deprecates Matt Billenstein’s cjson 1.0.6 because Matt’s patch parses the JSON twice, which makes it twice as slow. This will still be faster than all alternatives in certain circumstances. You will not find Matt’s cjson on the cheeseshop, only on Matt’s site.
Joseph Turian

March 24, 2009 at 1:14 am

Update (20090324-2): According to John Millikin, the author of jsonlib, cjson is buggy and unmaintained. I will evaluate further and post a followup blog entry. My discussion with Dan Pascu, the author of cjson, corroborates these claims. I urge readers to read John Millikin’s comment.