All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[Unreleased]

Added

• Daemon Mode (HTTP Server): Run SlimJSON as an HTTP service
  • -d or -daemon flag to run as HTTP server
  • -port flag to specify port (default: 8080)
  • RESTful API with 3 endpoints:
    • POST /slim?profile=<name> - Compress JSON
    • GET /health - Health check
    • GET /profiles - List available profiles
  • Supports all built-in and custom profiles
  • Production-ready HTTP server
• Custom Config File Priority: -c or -config flag
  • Specify custom config file path
  • Takes priority over .slimjson search
  • Enables multiple config files for different environments
• Default Help Message: Shows usage when run without arguments
  • Comprehensive help with all options
  • Examples for common use cases
  • API documentation for daemon mode
• API Documentation: Complete REST API documentation
  • OpenAPI 3.0 specification (Swagger)
  • API reference with examples
  • Integration guides for Python, JavaScript, Go
  • Docker and Kubernetes deployment examples
• Package Documentation: Comprehensive Go package documentation
  • Full API reference for pkg.go.dev
  • Usage examples and best practices
  • Real-world integration patterns
  • Thread safety guarantees
• HTTP API Tests: Complete test suite for daemon mode
  • Health endpoint tests
  • Profiles endpoint tests
  • Compression endpoint tests with multiple scenarios
  • Error handling tests
  • Config priority tests
• Automated Release Pipeline: GitHub Actions for publishing
  • Automatic binary builds for multiple platforms (linux, darwin, freebsd × amd64, arm64)
  • GitHub Releases with changelog and checksums
  • Automatic publication to pkg.go.dev
  • Docker image builds and push to ghcr.io
  • Multi-architecture Docker support (amd64, arm64)
  • Documentation validation workflow
  • Release process documentation (RELEASING.md)
• Configuration File Support: .slimjson configuration file for custom profiles
  • Searches in current directory and user home directory
  • Simple INI-style format: [profile-name] followed by key=value pairs
  • Custom profiles take precedence over built-in profiles
  • Supports all compression parameters
  • See .slimjson.example for complete reference
• CLI Predefined Profiles: New -profile flag with 4 predefined compression profiles:
  • light: Light compression, preserves most data (MaxDepth: 10, MaxListLength: 20)
  • medium: Balanced compression (MaxDepth: 5, MaxListLength: 10)
  • aggressive: Removes verbose text fields (MaxDepth: 3, MaxListLength: 5, BlockList: description, summary, etc.)
  • ai-optimized: Removes URLs and metadata (MaxDepth: 4, MaxListLength: 8, BlockList: *_url fields)

Basic Optimizations:

• Numeric Precision Control: -decimal-places N rounds floats to N decimal places (e.g., 19.999 → 20.0)
• Array Deduplication: -deduplicate removes duplicate values from arrays
• Array Sampling Strategies: -sample-strategy with 4 modes:
  • none: No sampling (default)
  • first_last: Keep first N/2 and last N/2 elements
  • random: Random N elements
  • representative: Evenly distributed sampling
• Sample Size Control: -sample-size N specifies number of items to keep when sampling
• String Truncation with Ellipsis: Truncated strings now end with ... to indicate content was cut

Advanced Compression Features:

• Null Compression: -null-compression tracks removed null fields in _nulls array
• Type Inference: -type-inference converts uniform arrays to schema+data format (40% savings)
• Boolean Compression: -bool-compression converts booleans to bit flags (60% savings)
• Timestamp Compression: -timestamp-compression converts ISO timestamps to unix timestamps (50% savings)
• String Pooling: -string-pooling deduplicates repeated strings (30-50% savings)
  • -string-pool-min N sets minimum occurrences (default: 2)
• Number Delta Encoding: -number-delta uses delta encoding for sequential numbers (50% savings)
  • -number-delta-threshold N sets minimum array size (default: 5)
• Enum Detection: -enum-detection converts repeated categorical values to enums (20-40% savings)
  • -enum-max-values N sets maximum unique values (default: 10)

Changed

• Profiles no longer truncate strings to preserve data integrity - use BlockList instead to remove entire unnecessary fields
• Profile flags can be overridden: Use -profile medium -decimal-places 2 to combine profile with custom settings
• Comprehensive compression testing suite in testing/ directory
• Three real-world JSON test files (resume.json, schema-resume.json, users.json)
• Compression benchmark tool (compression_benchmark.go) with detailed metrics
• Token counting in compression tests - shows estimated token reduction for AI/LLM use cases
• Statistical analysis with standard deviation calculation (10 iterations per test)
• Detailed methodology documentation in testing/METHODOLOGY.md
• Performance benchmarks (slimjson_bench_test.go) with 9 different scenarios
• Compression results table in README showing real-world reduction percentages
• Four compression profiles: Light, Medium, Aggressive, AI-Optimized
• Performance metrics documentation (16-47µs processing time)
• Testing documentation in testing/README.md
• Makefile targets: make bench and make compression-test
• Shell script run_tests.sh for easy test execution
• Documentation files: EXAMPLES.md, QUICK_START.md, TESTING_SUMMARY.md
• GitHub Pages with Jekyll and Cayman theme for documentation
• Automatic deployment via GitHub Actions

Changed

• Updated README with comprehensive compression results and benchmarks
• Enhanced .gitignore to exclude testing artifacts
• Improved Makefile with new testing and benchmarking targets

Performance

• Small files (5KB): ~16µs per operation
• Medium files (25KB): ~39µs per operation
• Large files (28KB): ~47µs per operation
• Excellent parallel processing scalability

[0.1.6] - Previous Release

Features

• Core JSON slimming functionality
• CLI tool with multiple configuration options
• Docker/Podman support
• Multi-platform binaries (Linux, macOS, FreeBSD)
• Basic unit tests