urlparse4

urlparse4 is a performance-focused replacement for Python's urlparse module, using C++ code from Chromium's own URL parser.

It is not production-ready yet.

Many credits go to gurl-cython for inspiration.

Differences with Python's urlparse

urlparse4 should be a transparent, drop-in replacement in almost all cases. Still, there are a few differences to be aware of:

• urlparse4 is 2-7x faster for most operations (see benchmarks below)
• urlparse4 currently doesn't pass CPython's test_urlparse.py suite due to edge cases that Chromium's parser manages differently (usually in accordance to the RFCs, which urlparse doesn't follow entirely).
• urlparse4 only supports Python 2.7 for now

How to install

pip install urlparse4

How to use

The most straightforward way to use urlparse4 is to replace your imports of urlparse with this:

import urlparse4 as urlparse

You could also monkey-patch its methods in the global urlparse module like this:

import urlparse4
import urlparse

for attr in dir(urlparse4):
	setattr(urlparse, attr, getattr(urlparse4, attr))

How to test

You must have Docker installed and running. You can run CPython's test suite for urlparse like this:

make docker_build
make docker_test

Benchmarks

We are testing the following librairies on a sample of 100k URLs from Blink and DMOZ:

• urlparse4 ;-)
• CPython's urlparse
• urlparse2
• YURL
• uritools
• pygurl / gurl-cython
• cyuri

Each of them is being tested on a few different types of operations (basic urlsplit, relative link resolution, hostname extraction)

Here is how to launch the tests:

make docker_build
make docker_benchmark

Current results on a 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 MBP (in seconds):

Benchmark results on 104300 URLs x 10 times, in seconds:

Name              Sum            Mean               Median             90%
----------------  -------------  -----------------  -----------------  -----------------

urlsplit:
----              ----           ----               ----               ----
urlparse4         1.681858       1.61251965484e-06  1.99999999984e-06  2.00000000006e-06
pygurl            2.031712       1.94795014382e-06  1.99999999984e-06  2.00000000028e-06
uritools          2.638991       2.53019271333e-06  2.00000000028e-06  3.00000000042e-06
yurl              3.910247       3.74903835091e-06  3.00000000131e-06  4.99999999981e-06
urlparse2         3.756782       3.60190028763e-06  2.99999999953e-06  4.00000000056e-06
urlparse          3.862006       3.70278619367e-06  3.00000000308e-06  4.99999999803e-06
cyuri             9.912275       9.50361936721e-06  8.00000000112e-06  1.30000000027e-05

urljoin_sibling:
----              ----           ----               ----               ----
urlparse4         2.008453       1.92565004794e-06  2.00000000206e-06  2.00000000206e-06
pygurl            2.193427       2.10299808245e-06  2.00000000206e-06  2.99999999953e-06
uritools          10.575344      1.01393518696e-05  9.99999999607e-06  1.20000000052e-05
yurl              13.213052      1.26683144775e-05  1.19999999981e-05  1.60000000022e-05
urlparse2         14.239327      1.36522790029e-05  1.19999999981e-05  1.69999999997e-05
urlparse          9.25991500001  8.87815436242e-06  8.00000000822e-06  1.10000000006e-05
cyuri             5.742724       5.50596740172e-06  5.00000000159e-06  7.00000001075e-06

hostname:
----              ----           ----               ----               ----
urlparse4         1.883982       1.80631064237e-06  1.99999999495e-06  2.00000000916e-06
pygurl            1.67332099999  1.60433461169e-06  1.99999999495e-06  2.00000000916e-06
uritools          3.31632199999  3.17959923297e-06  3.00000000664e-06  4.00000000411e-06
yurl              3.853319       3.69445733461e-06  3.00000000664e-06  4.00000000411e-06
urlparse2         4.641513       4.45015627996e-06  4.00000000411e-06  5.99999999906e-06
urlparse          5.122682       4.91148801534e-06  4.00000000411e-06  5.99999999906e-06
cyuri             11.108649      1.06506701822e-05  9.0000000057e-06   1.5999999988e-05

Some libraries are included in the benchmark code but disabled for various reasons:

• urlparse3 (Raises on valid URLs)
• slimurl (Too slow)

Feel free to submit pull requests to add new ones!

Feedback

We'd love to hear your feedback! Feel free to look at the issues on GitHub and open new ones if needed :)