James Newton-King

Archives

Archives / 2015
  • Dec 29 2015

    Json.NET 8.0 Release 1 - Allocations and bug fixes

    Memory, Allocations and Performance

    There is a big push across the .NET eco-system on performance. In modern .NET apps one of the biggest culprits of poor performance is allocating too many objects. The more objects and memory you allocate, the more the garbage collector needs to clean up. Best case garbage collection will slow your application; worst cause the app will halt execution until GC is finished. GC is a great way to kill pages per second on the server and frames per second on the client.

    To reduce allocations and memory usage when serializing Json.NET 8.0 adds a new IArrayPool interface. Json.NET is already very lean when it comes to allocations, working with raw characters on array buffers instead of allocated strings, but those buffers can easily grow large, and a new buffer is created each time JSON is read or written. IArrayPool allows array buffers to be reused, similar to connection pooling with a database, or thread pooling in .NET.

    public class JsonArrayPool : IArrayPool<char>
    {
        public static readonly JsonArrayPool Instance = new JsonArrayPool();
     
        public char[] Rent(int minimumLength)
        {
            // get char array from System.Buffers shared pool
            return ArrayPool<char>.Shared.Rent(minimumLength);
        }
     
        public void Return(char[] array)
        {
            // return char array to System.Buffers shared pool
            ArrayPool<char>.Shared.Return(array);
        }
    }

    The example implemention above uses the upcoming System.Buffers package to manage pooling. Using the array pool just involves setting a property on JsonTextReader/JsonTextWriter.

    IList<int> value;
     
    JsonSerializer serializer = new JsonSerializer();
    using (JsonTextReader reader = new JsonTextReader(new StringReader(@"[1,2,3,4]")))
    {
        // reader will get buffer from array pool
        reader.ArrayPool = JsonArrayPool.Instance;
     
        value = serializer.Deserialize<IList<int>>(reader);
    }

    IArrayPool is a somewhat experimental feature. Unless you have extreme performance requirements or your own object pooling system already in-place you can wait until a default pool is automatically included with Json.NET.

    JArray and Comments

    Previously when loading JSON that contained comments into JArrays the comment would be added as an item in the JArray. This would be a common cause of errors: most developers would expect a commented out value in a JArray to disappear, instead it becomes a comment token, and an error would be thrown if the app looped over the array, casting its values.

    In Json.NET 8.0 comments are ignored by default. If you want the old behaviour then set CommentHandling.Load on JsonLoadSettings.

    Bug Fixes. Bug Fixes Everywhere.

    There are two dozen minor bug fixes in Json.NET 8.0, ranging from fixes serializing DataSets and XML (brave souls still use them), to serializing F# discriminated unions in UWP applications.

    Changes

    Here is a complete list of what has changed since Json.NET 7.0 Release 1.

    • New feature - Added IArrayPool and a setting on JsonTextReader and JsonTextWriter
    • New feature - Added JsonReader.ReadAsDouble
    • New feature - Added JsonLoadSettings and CommentHandling to control loading comments in LINQ to JSON
    • New feature - Added JsonLoadSettings.LineInfoHandling
    • New feature - Added support for JsonConstructorAttribute on list and dictionary collections
    • New feature - Added support for deserializing string to Version
    • New feature - Added ShouldDeserialize to JsonProperty
    • New feature - Added Required.DisallowNull
    • New feature - Added support for converting JSON to XML with invalid XML name chracters
    • New feature - Improved case-insensitive deserialization performance
    • New feature - Improved date parsing performance
    • Change - Changed ReadAsDateTime, ReadAsDateTimeOffset, ReadAsBytes, ReadAsString, ReadAsInt32 on JsonReader from abstract to virtual
    • Change - Changed parsing JArrays to not include comments by default
    • Change - Changed JTokenWriter to use the last property instead of erroring when there are duplicate property names
    • Change - Changed Uri JValues to use OriginalString when written to JSON
    • Change - Changed DateTimeOffset JValues to return TypeCode.Object from IConvertible.GetTypeCode()
    • Fix - Fixed converting JSON metadata array value to XML
    • Fix - Fixed not including line information with some XML conversion errors
    • Fix - Fixed error when writing certain JSON with escaped characters
    • Fix - Fixed PopulateObject error when JSON starts with a comment
    • Fix - Fixed incorrect IJsonLineInfo line position after the first line
    • Fix - Fixed JSONPath when querying against Uri, Guid and Date values
    • Fix - Fixed JsonReader.Path when the path is escaped
    • Fix - Fixed writing JRaw twice when a TraceWriter is set
    • Fix - Fixed getting the wrong value when reading certain large integers
    • Fix - Fixed deserializing DataSet with a null DataTable
    • Fix - Fixed deserializing a null DataSet
    • Fix - Fixed error when serializing F# discriminated unions in Windows Store apps
    • Fix - Fixed error serializing some types when there are conflicting interface properties
    • Fix - Fixed error when settings ReferenceResolver is set to null
    • Fix - Fixed DateTimeZoneHandling not being used when writing DateTime dictionary keys
    • Fix - Fixed bug when converting an integer JValue to a nullable enum
    • Fix - Fixed converting null string JValue to XML
    • Fix - Fixed Mono generic class private field serialization bug
    • Fix - Fixed error when deserializing ignored property with mismatched type
    • Fix - Fixed deserializing to a type when setting JToken extension data
    • Fix - Fixed setting default values onto properties already set in constructor
    • Fix - Fixed casting dynamic JValue to JToken
    • Fix - Fixed serializing non-zero based arrays
    • Fix - Fixed reading 24 hour midnight ISO dates

    Links

    Json.NET GitHub Project

    Json.NET 8.0 Release 1 Download - Json.NET source code and assemblies

  • Jun 22 2015

    Json.NET 7.0 Release 1 - Documentation, bug fixes, performance

    Documentation

    The biggest improvements in Json.NET 7.0 have been to user documentation. The old documentation design with its 2003 era HTML (iframes + inline JavaScript) has been replaced with a lightweight, fast to load design.

    Old and Busted (left) vs New Hotness (right):

    It takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen   It's Patty who chose a life of celibacy. Selma had celibacy thrust upon her

    It has been a couple of years since the docs were properly updated. New features added since then like extension data, annotations and JSONPath now have documentation and code samples. The new code samples brings the total up to 116!

    Finally the documentation has been professionally proofread. My most embarrassing grammatical errors have been fixed.

    NuGet Logo

    Json.NET has a NuGet logo. Check it:

    Kill my boss? Do I dare live out the American dream?

    DiscriminatedUnionConverter performance improvements

    Json.NET’s F# discriminated union support has been rewritten. Serializing very large collections of large discriminated unions was noticeably slow. The new implementation caches reflection and type data, and significantly improves performance.

    What’s the point of going out? We’re just gonna wind up back home anyway.

    That’s a 3200% improvement. If you’re using F# then you don’t need to do anything other than update Json.NET.

    And everything else

    Json.NET 7.0 includes 30 changes from 6 months of user feature requests and bug reports.

    Changes

    Here is a complete list of what has changed since Json.NET 6.0 Release 8.

    • New feature - DiscriminatedUnionConverter performance improvements
    • New feature - Added JsonRequiredAttribute
    • New feature - Added JsonSerializerSettings.ReferenceResolverProvider property
    • New feature - Added DefaultContractResolver.ResolveDictionaryKey
    • New feature - Added JsonDictionaryContract.DictionaryKeyResolver
    • New feature - Added support for reading GUID strings as bytes in JsonTextReader
    • New feature - Added EqualityComparer to JsonSerializer
    • Change - Changed reading GUIDs as bytes to only support 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 format
    • Change - Renamed aspnetcore50 target to dnxcore50
    • Change - Marked JsonSchema as obsolete
    • Change - Marked DefaultContractResolver(bool) as obsolete
    • Change - Marked JsonSerializerSettings.ReferenceResolver as obsolete
    • Change - Marked JsonDictionaryContract.PropertyNameResolver as obsolete
    • Fix - Fixed deserializing empty strings in Hashtables
    • Fix - Fixed incorrect JTokenReader.Path in certain situations
    • Fix - Fixed error when serializing certain objects in medium trust
    • Fix - Fixed deserializing large nullable UInt64 values
    • Fix - Fixed writing large UInt64 JValues
    • Fix - Fixed converting unmatched namespace prefixes in JSON to XML
    • Fix - Fixed IsoDateTimeConverter on DateTime properties with DateTimeFormatHandling.DateTimeOffset
    • Fix - Fixed preserving object references with read only properties
    • Fix - Fixed error when deserializing large JSON integers to XML
    • Fix - Fixed serializing extension data properties with no setter
    • Fix - Fixed serializing discriminated unions with type name or reference tracking enabled
    • Fix - Fixed DataTableConverter not using JsonSerializer settings
    • Fix - Fixed resolving properties from nested interfaces
    • Fix - Fixed deserializing classes derived from ConcurrentDictionary
    • Fix - Fixed passing default values to constructors
    • Fix - Fixed serializing root references from JsonConverters
    • Fix - Fixed empty strings coerced to null not erroring with Required.Always
    • Fix - Fixed invalid Required.Always error with constructor property name casing
    • Fix - Fixed empty string coerce check with Required.Always and constructor

    Links

    Json.NET GitHub Project

    Json.NET 7.0 Release 1 Download - Json.NET source code and assemblies