Try::Tiny has some performance issues

[spansh]

So I'm using this amongst other things to load my indexes up in bulk. This process takes some 5-6 hours so I've been profiling to see where I can improve it (It's already been improved quite a bit, it was between 8 and 18 hours).

One of the things I noticed is that you're using Try::Tiny everywhere (but especially within your json encoder role).

According to https://metacpan.org/pod/Try::Tiny::Tiny and http://blogs.perl.org/users/diab_jerius/2017/04/how-fast-can-you-try.html Try::Tiny is actually pretty slow.

In Search::Elasticsearch::Role::Serializer::JSON I changed the encode routine to

#===================================
sub encode {
#===================================
    my ( $self, $var ) = @_;
    unless ( ref $var ) {
        return is_utf8($var)
            ? encode_utf8($var)
            : $var;
    }
    my $return;
    eval {
        $return = $self->JSON->encode($var);
    };
    if ($@) {
        throw( "Serializer",$@, { var => $var } );
    }

    return $return;
}

On a limited run which took 4:22 before I changed, it now takes 3:43. This is borne out by my profiling which shows it taking 30 seconds https://imgur.com/a/7A8jUg5

Results from my changed version are shown here https://imgur.com/a/cljcPQR

I was really quite surprised that Try::Tiny had that much overhead but it may be worth considering switching back to using raw eval or Syntax::Keyword::Try which came out favourably as well.

[spansh]

If you like I can send a pull request in with the relevant changes. Minimized to the json encode/decode stuff if wanted. I've gone another way with c++ version for the extra speed so it's not urgent for me right now.

[clintongormley]

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you on this. Interesting find, and worth changing. I had a quick grep through the module and I'm using none of the more interesting features of Try::Tiny, so it could be replaced by pretty much any of the alternative modules. One thing I'm not sure about is if those modules play nicely with AnyEvent.

I'd be happy to review a PR, even just targeting the JSON encoding bit (but would be good to completely switch modules instead)

[djzort]

Syntax::Keyword::Try is also less quirky than Try::Tiny

[spansh]

Syntax::Keyword::Try is also less quirky than Try::Tiny

I did consider that but it has a hard requirement of perl 5.14 and it's still somewhat slower than eval, so I figured if we were speeding things up it made sense to just go with the basics. It's also much less likely to conflict with AnyEvent

[clintongormley]

Thanks for this PR and sorry for the slow responses. I'm trying to find time to release a 7.0 compatible version at the moment, and will look at merging this at the same time.

[djzort]

eval() is probably the way to go in terms of speed and compatibility.

[matthewlenz]

@spansh, how much slower was Syntax::Keyword::Try than eval?

[spansh]

The link in the original post has speed comparisons http://blogs.perl.org/users/diab_jerius/2017/04/how-fast-can-you-try.html

[ezimuel]

@spansh thanks for the link, I'll have a look to your PR soon.