Overview

This project was created to compare the payload size and speed of serialization formats (Protocol Buffers, JSON, YAML, native PHP object serialization).

Setup

1. start containers through docker compose:

   docker-compose up --build

2. enter the maincontainer

   docker-compose exec main sh

3. install composer dependencies within main container:

   composer install

4. generate code from proto definitions

   rm -rf src/generated/* && protoc --php_out=src/generated --proto_path=/app/ person.proto

Execute benchmarks

All benchmarks are executed from the command line - go into container:

 docker-compose exec main sh   

Decoding benchmarks

php vendor/bin/phpbench run src/ProtobufBenchmarks/DecodeBench.php --report=aggregate

Encoding benchmarks

php vendor/bin/phpbench run src/ProtobufBenchmarks/EncodeBench.php --report=aggregate

Payload size benchmarks

php size_benchmarks.php

Current results

Payload

Technology	PayloadSize (bits)
ProtoBuf	672
JSON	1504
YAML	1552
PHP	2648

Speed

Technology	Encode (mean μs)	Decode (mean μs)
ProtoBuf	3.385	5.569
JSON	1.776	3.620
YAML	62.632	118.442
PHP	2.208	2.643

+-------------+----------------+-----+-------+-----+------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------+--------+--------+
| benchmark   | subject        | set | revs  | its | mem_peak   | best     | mean     | mode     | worst    | stdev   | rstdev | diff   |
+-------------+----------------+-----+-------+-----+------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------+--------+--------+
| EncodeBench | encodeProtobuf | 0   | 10000 | 5   | 953,280b   | 3.111μs  | 3.385μs  | 3.243μs  | 3.977μs  | 0.304μs | 8.97%  | 1.91x  |
| EncodeBench | encodeJson     | 0   | 10000 | 5   | 953,280b   | 1.417μs  | 1.776μs  | 1.931μs  | 2.069μs  | 0.252μs | 14.17% | 1.00x  |
| EncodeBench | encodeYaml     | 0   | 10000 | 5   | 1,585,640b | 61.690μs | 62.632μs | 63.117μs | 63.468μs | 0.730μs | 1.17%  | 35.26x |
| EncodeBench | encodePhp      | 0   | 10000 | 5   | 953,280b   | 2.208μs  | 2.474μs  | 2.353μs  | 2.811μs  | 0.234μs | 9.46%  | 1.39x  |
+-------------+----------------+-----+-------+-----+------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------+--------+--------+

+-------------+----------------+-----+-------+-----+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+--------+--------+
| benchmark   | subject        | set | revs  | its | mem_peak   | best      | mean      | mode      | worst     | stdev   | rstdev | diff   |
+-------------+----------------+-----+-------+-----+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+--------+--------+
| DecodeBench | decodeProtobuf | 0   | 10000 | 5   | 1,589,064b | 4.589μs   | 5.569μs   | 5.239μs   | 7.144μs   | 0.846μs | 15.19% | 1.90x  |
| DecodeBench | decodeJson     | 0   | 10000 | 5   | 1,589,064b | 3.152μs   | 3.620μs   | 3.388μs   | 4.536μs   | 0.501μs | 13.83% | 1.23x  |
| DecodeBench | decodeYaml     | 0   | 10000 | 5   | 1,589,064b | 114.876μs | 119.065μs | 118.442μs | 124.125μs | 3.494μs | 2.93%  | 40.61x |
| DecodeBench | decodePhp      | 0   | 10000 | 5   | 1,589,064b | 2.480μs   | 2.932μs   | 2.643μs   | 3.525μs   | 0.435μs | 14.83% | 1.00x  |
+-------------+----------------+-----+-------+-----+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------+--------+--------+

Conclusion

Payload

ProtoBuf takes 2.24 times less space then JSON.

1000000 messages:

• Protobuf: 84 MB
• JSON: 188 MB

Speed

JSON is 1.9 times faster then ProtoBuf.

1000000 messages:

• ProtoBuf: 3.38 seconds
• JSON: 1.78 seconds

Considering network

To transfer the payload over network the following times are needed.

network with 10 MB/s for 1000000 messages:

• Protobuf: 9 seconds
• JSON: 19 seconds

=> through smaller payloads ProtoBuf wins on overall timings (serialization + network)