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Comments on Does using an Integer have any speed/performance benefits over a string in JSON
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Does using an Integer have any speed/performance benefits over a string in JSON
I'm working on an API to respond some data about a bunch of orders and items.
The order and item numbers are always an integer (it's the order.id and item.id value, respectively).
Originally the response included each order number and each item number as a string, something like:
{
"orders": [
{
"id": "12345",
"item": [
"123",
"124",
"125",
"126"
]
},
{
"id": "95812",
"item": [
"173",
"198"
]
}
]
}
I instructed the team to make the values as integers rather than strings, that exact response now looks like:
{
"orders": [
{
"id": 12345,
"item": [
123,
124,
125,
126
]
},
{
"id": 95812,
"item": [
173,
198
]
}
]
}
My question is if there is really any purpose to what I've done? We're never going to need to perform any mathematical equations on the number, essentially they are functioning as strings (as far as I'm aware).
Perhaps it's counterproductive because now an order number cannot contain any other character besides a number - but that's anyhow how it works since it's using an INTEGER type in the database.
There's always the smaller and therefor faster response - since there's no ".
In the above example (minified) it's almost 17% smaller.
- string = 96 bytes
- int = 80 bytes
Post
Before doing any performance testing, I think you have already noticed that the payload is significantly smaller by missing those double quotes.
However, what I think is more important, especially when dealing with rather large applications and/or systems you do not own is using the appropriate data types and minimizing the chance that something wrong goes into that property.
Moreover, JSON is human readable and it is helpful for anyone reading the payload to understand what type that property has (a JSON schema can be used though).
My opinion is that if performance is not critical (i.e. you do not have to squeeze about 5%), having more readable and robust data structures is more important as any error here might lead to wasting a time worth more than what was gained through increased performace.
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