We had an API that slowed under large JSON payloads. After profiling, it turned out the bottleneck was in Jackson parsing.
Tweaks that helped:
- Used
@JsonProperty annotations to reduce reflection
- Disabled FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES
- Enabled stream-based parsing where applicableBonus: We benchmarked Jackson vs Gson vs Moshi. Jackson won for speed, but Moshi impressed with predictability.
Java may not be a “fast” language for JSON, but with the right config, you can squeeze out solid performance.