Performance Benchmarks

In this article, we will learn how to build a simple REST API using Go, Python, and Node.js. We will also learn how to benchmark the performance of our API endpoints using Apache Benchmark tool.

Prerequisites

• Go
• Python
• Node.js
• Apache Benchmark

Building a REST API

Go

• Create a new directory for our Go project:

mkdir go-rest-api

cd go-rest-api

• Create a new file named main.go and add the following code:

package main

import (
    "net/http"
)

func main() {

    http.HandleFunc("/ping", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.   Request) {

        w.Write([]byte("pong"))
    })

    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

• Run the following command to build and run our Go project:

go run main.go

• Open a new terminal and run the following command to test our /ping endpoint:

curl http://localhost:8080/ping

• The output should be:

pong

Python

• Create a new directory for our Python project:

mkdir python-rest-api

cd python-rest-api

• Create a new file named main.py and add the following code:

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/ping", methods=["GET"])

def ping():
    return "pong"

if __name__ == "__main__":

app.run()

• Run the following command to install Flask:

pip install flask

• Run the following command to build and run our Python project:

python main.py

• Open a new terminal and run the following command to test our /ping endpoint:

curl http://localhost:5000/ping

• The output should be:

pong

Node.js

• Create a new directory for our Node.js project:

mkdir nodejs-rest-api

cd nodejs-rest-api

• Create a new file named main.js and add the following code:

const express = require("express");

const app = express();

app.get("/ping", (req, res) => {
  res.send("pong");
});

app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log("Server is running on port 3000.");
});

• Run the following command to install Express:

npm install express

• Run the following command to build and run our Node.js project:

node main.js

• Open a new terminal and run the following command to test our /ping endpoint:

curl http://localhost:3000/ping

• The output should be:

pong

Benchmarking the Performance

We conducted a benchmark test for our /ping endpoint using Apache Benchmark tool with the following specifications:

• Document Path: /ping
• Document Length: 4 bytes
• Concurrency Level: 10
• Total requests: 1,000,000
• Here are the results of our benchmark test:

These results indicate that our /ping endpoint is performing well under high load with a high number of concurrent requests. However, it is important to note that the performance may vary depending on the system specifications and network conditions.

Framework	Concurrency Level	Time taken for tests (seconds)	Complete requests	Failed requests	Total transferred (bytes)	HTML transferred (bytes)	Requests per second (mean)	Time per request (mean)	Time per request (mean, across all concurrent requests)	Transfer rate (Kbytes/sec)
Go (net/http)	10	40.917	1000000	0	120000000	4000000	24439.90	0.409 ms	0.041 ms	2864.05
Python (Flask)	10	1123.621	1000000	0	176000000	4000000	889.98	11.236 ms	1.124 ms	152.97
Node.js (Express)	10	166.324	1000000	0	202000000	4000000	6012.35	1.663 ms	0.166 ms	1186.03

• NOTE: The results may vary depending on the system specifications and network conditions.

Conclusion

In this article, we have learned how to build a simple REST API using Go, Python, and Node.js. We have also learned how to benchmark the performance of our API endpoints using Apache Benchmark tool. We hope that this article will help you to build your own REST API.

References

• Go net/http package

• Python Flask

• Node.js Express

• Apache Benchmark