Advantages of Parcelable over JSON

Question

I'm currently using JSON (org.json) to serialize one of my data classes. When I pass it in a Bundle or with an Intent, I just call .toString() on the sender side and then recreate the class on the receiving side. From everything I've read so far, I should not implement Java's Serializable due to performance concerns. I'm in the process of rewriting certain portions of the app and I was considering making my data classes implement Parcelable and transfer them that way. What would the advantages be if I did it that way? Would it be preferable if I used the Jackson JSON library instead? Most of the JSON work is based on the API; server responds only with JSON. I also store some of the JSON for caching on the app side.

Belshazzar

Answer 1

I think JSON is by far the most convenient mechanism for typical POJOs; and it seems unlikely that performance should be significantly worse that with Parcelable. Parcelable implementation could be more compact; but if that is problematic, you could even compress cached JSON payloads. So I would probably try out JSON first and see how it works.

Besmirch

Hi @StaxMan, any source? – Arnoldoarnon

@LucaFagioli unfortunately I don't have a link to measurements -- just haven't heard of any performance gains, or any complaints on JSON performance (except for startup overhead of some libs) – Besmirch