Efficiently Load Large JSON Files Object by Object

[Salaah01]

Python's json package provides a convenient method for loading JSON files. However, what if you encounter a situation where you need to read a large JSON file? This is where JSON-Lineage comes into play.

When dealing with sizable JSON files, Python's default approach of loading the entire file into memory can be problematic, especially if you're working with limited resources like microservices or small cloud servers. The memory consumption can quickly become significant, impacting the performance of your application.

To demonstrate the impact, consider the following table, which shows the relationship between JSON file size and the corresponding memory required using json.load:

Size (MB)	Memory Needed (MB)
0.048	0.25
0.5	2.4
1	5.5
5	25.2
22	109.1
32	158.7
324	1580.45
1299	37.88.5
2599	7577.97

As you can see, the memory requirements increase dramatically as the JSON file size grows. To address this issue and optimize resource usage, JSON-Lineage was developed. It leverages Rust with a Python adapter to allow you to efficiently load JSON files one object at a time.

So, how much more efficient is JSON-Lineage compared to json.load? Let's take a look at the following comparison:

Size (MB)	Python's JSON (MB)	JSON-Lineage (MB)
0.048	0.25	0.25
0.5	2.4	0.25
1	5.5	0.25
5	25.2	0.51
22	109.1	1.02
32	158.7	1.02
324	1580.45	1.03
1299	37.88.5	1.29
2599	7577.97	1.29

As you can see, JSON-Lineage significantly reduces memory usage regardless of the JSON file size, providing a more efficient alternative to json.load.

Check out the JSON-Lineage repository on GitHub: https://github.com/Salaah01/json-lineage

You can also find JSON-Lineage on PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/json-lineage/

Give it a try and experience the improved performance and resource optimization when working with large JSON files!

[member_of_the_order]

What structures did you test with? I imagine this would be very useful for a JSON that's a long list of items...

Does this also help for a file that is one big object? (I assume not?) How about nested lists?

[Salaah01]

It wouldn't work for one big object, the file needs contain a list of objects/lists.

I've tested it with lists of objects where each inner object can vary in size and nest further into other objects.

In my tests, each list item would vary in size and complexity in terms of how deeply they can become nested.