dart_io_comparison.md

Comparing with dart:io

This page covers the API differences and performance differences.

API Comparison

We have 2 API differences between dart:io and package:cronet.

SecurityContext

dart:io

HttpClient({SecurityContext? context})

package:cronet

HttpClient constructor doesn't take SecurityContext as a parameter. To use any custom/self-signed SSL certificate, it must be added to the system's trust store.

userAgent

dart:io

final client = HttpClient();
client.userAgent = 'myUA/1.0'; // using custom UA string.
print(client.userAgent); // Will print myUA/1.0.

package:cronet

final client = HttpClient(userAgent: 'myUA/1.0'); // using custom UA string.
print(client.userAgent); // Will print myUA/1.0.

Performance Comparison

Results may get affected by: #11.

Here we present the result from a general purpose machine (Ryzen 5 2500U, 8GB RAM) with a 1.7MBPS network connection running Ubuntu 20.04 against example.com.

Latency (Sequential Requests)

Mode	package:cronet	dart:io
JIT	296.429 ms	402.200 ms
AOT	262.625 ms	432.200 ms

Throughput (Parallel Requests)

Throughput Test Results (Duration: 1s). Considering the best appearing value only

Mode	package:cronet	dart:io
JIT	225 (Parallel Requests: 128)	5 (Parallel Requests: 32)
AOT	227 (Parallel Requests: 128)	2 (Parallel Requests: 4)

Size comparison

We can notice a size increment of 2MB (on avg.) in Flutter (Android) apps if we use package:cronet instead of dart:io. We're working on reducing it. The progress can be tracked at #30.