Performance
How async-stripe achieves fast compile times and small binary sizes
The Stripe API has a massive surface area, and the code generation process creates a very large number of types. Using serde for both serialization and deserialization in previous versions resulted in excessive codegen size and long compile times. To solve this, async-stripe now uses a hybrid approach.
Hybrid Serialization Strategy
async-stripe uses different libraries for serialization and deserialization to optimize both performance and compile times:
| Operation | Library | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Serialization (requests → Stripe) | serde | Rich feature set ideal for building complex request parameters. Full control over field naming, optional fields, and nested structures. |
| Deserialization (Stripe → responses) | miniserde | Minimal, high-performance JSON library that significantly reduces compile times and binary size. Optimized for the common case of deserializing API responses. |
Benefits
- Faster Compile Times:
miniserdehas minimal proc-macro overhead compared to fullserdederives - Smaller Binary Size: Less codegen means smaller final binaries
- Same API Surface: You don't need to change how you use the library
Limited Error Reporting
miniserde provides minimal error messages when deserialization fails. If you encounter a deserialization error and need detailed diagnostics about which field failed and why, enable the deserialize feature to use serde instead, which provides comprehensive error context. You can also paste the raw json event into the Stripe Event Parser to see exactly where the error occurred.
Using serde::Deserialize
If you need to use serde::Deserialize on Stripe response types within your own application (for example, to store them in a database or serialize them for caching), you can enable the deserialize feature on any of the stripe-* crates.
[dependencies]
stripe-core = { version = "1.0.0-alpha.8", features = ["customer", "deserialize"] }This adds serde::Deserialize implementations to all Stripe types in that crate, allowing you to use them with any serde-compatible serialization format (JSON, TOML, MessagePack, etc.).
Performance Considerations
The hybrid approach means:
- Request serialization remains flexible and feature-rich
- Response deserialization is optimized for speed and compile time
- Opt-in
serdesupport for advanced use cases that need it
This design ensures async-stripe scales well even as the Stripe API continues to grow, without imposing long compile times on all users.
Try It Out
Want to see how async-stripe parses Stripe events? Try pasting an event JSON below. It uses the library serde_path_to_error and can report exactly where deserialization failed.
Under Construction
This feature is being built! Eventually this will use WASM to parse Stripe events using the actual async-stripe library.