Python 2.6 JSON decoding performance

I'm using the json module in Python 2.6 to load and decode JSON files. However I'm currently getting slower than expected performance. I'm using a test case which is 6MB in size and json.loads() is taking 20 seconds.

I thought the json module had some native code to speed up the decoding?

How do I check if this is being used?

As a comparison, I downloaded and installed the python-cjson module, and cjson.decode() is taking 1 second for the same test case.

I'd rather use the JSON module provided with Python 2.6 so that users of my code aren't required to install additional modules.

(I'm developing on Mac OS X, but I getting a similar result on Windows XP.)

The new Yajl - Yet Another JSON Library is very fast.

yajl        serialize: 0.180  deserialize: 0.182  total: 0.362
simplejson  serialize: 0.840  deserialize: 0.490  total: 1.331
stdlib json serialize: 2.812  deserialize: 8.725  total: 11.537

You can compare the libraries yourself.

Update: UltraJSON is even faster.

It may vary by platform, but the builtin json module is based on simplejson, not including the C speedups. I've found simplejson to be as a fast as python-cjson anyway, so I prefer it since it obviously has the same interface as the builtin.

try:
    import simplejson as json
except ImportError:
    import json

Seems to me that's the best idiom for awhile, yielding the performance when available while being forwards-compatible.