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Python Modules That Make Handling JSON Even Faster
There’s more than just the vanilla JSON library
Parsing JSON is a necessary evil of software development. If you’re interacting with an API, sending messages between hosts or scraping data then it’s probably in JSON. Python ships with the standard json library, and in most cases it is plenty sufficient, but for some scenarios you might want something more flexible and a bit faster.
If you’re building an application or a library that does a lot of heavy JSON lifting then it is worthwhile to invest in a more robust module. In this article we’ll look at some standout modules that let you slice and dice JSON in ways the vanilla modules could only dream of. Some of these modules also make significant speed improvements over the standard json library.
1. orjson
If you handle a high volume of complex JSON objects and need things to happen super fast then the orjson module is for you. This module is faster than the default Python json library and is capable of handling many different data types (including NumPy).
The primary benefits of this library are speed and efficiency, and it has some pretty impressive statistics:
Although this isn’t a direct replacement for the default json module, the speed and efficiency benefits make it especially enticing for data pipelines. If you’re struggling with parsing bottlenecks then this might be your holy grail of modules.
