Benchmark: Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify Equality Comparison for complex objects

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash@4.17.4/lodash.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

var now = new Date()
window.foo = [{ one: 'cat', two: { one: 'dog', two: now } }, 'bird', ['yellow', 'green', { blue: 'purple' }]];
window.bar = [{ one: 'cat', two: { one: 'dog', two: now } }, 'bird', ['yellow', 'green', { blue: 'purple' }]];

Tests:

_.isEqual
_.isEqual(window.foo, window.bar)
JSON.stringify
JSON.stringify(window.foo) === JSON.stringify(window.bar);

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 71 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 60 runs

_.isEqual

1.0M/s

JSON.stringify

381K/s

Fastest: _.isEqual (2.7x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ _.isEqual: 1,033,681 ops/sec
• JSON.stringify: 380,946 ops/sec

Firefox 11 runs

JSON.stringify

597K/s

_.isEqual

577K/s

View exact numbers

✓ JSON.stringify: 597,280 ops/sec
• _.isEqual: 576,516 ops/sec

Results show median performance across all community submissions. Run this benchmark yourself to verify on your device.

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
_.isEqual
JSON.stringify

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one month ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/149.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 149 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

_.isEqual

908K/s

JSON.stringify

359K/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ _.isEqual	907,685 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify	359,444 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into the world of JavaScript microbenchmarks and explore what's being tested on MeasureThat.net.

**Benchmark Definition JSON**

The provided JSON defines two benchmark tests:

1. **Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify Equality Comparison for complex objects**: This test compares the performance of `lodash.isEqual` (a utility function from the Lodash library) versus comparing the stringified versions of two complex object arrays (`window.foo` and `window.bar`) using the `===` operator.
2. **_.isEqual** and **JSON.stringify**: These are individual benchmark tests for each comparison approach.

**Options Compared**

The two main options being compared are:

1. **Lodash.isEqual**: This uses a custom equality function to compare objects, which can be more efficient than comparing stringified versions of objects using `===`.
2. **JSON.stringify === JSON.stringify**: This compares the stringified versions of two objects directly.

**Pros and Cons**

* **Lodash.isEqual**:
	+ Pros: Can handle complex object structures and nested properties more efficiently, as it uses a custom equality function that considers these details.
	+ Cons: May have a higher overhead due to its custom implementation, which might incur additional processing time.
* **JSON.stringify === JSON.stringify**:
	+ Pros: Simple and efficient, as it only compares the string representations of objects. This approach can be faster for simple objects with few properties.
	+ Cons: May not handle complex object structures or nested properties efficiently, as it uses a simplistic comparison that only checks for exact matches.

**Other Considerations**

* **Library usage**: The test case uses Lodash library version 4.17.4. Lodash is a popular utility library for JavaScript that provides a wide range of functions for tasks like string manipulation, array operations, and object manipulation.
* **Special JS feature/syntax**: There are no specific features or syntaxes being tested in this benchmark. The focus is on comparing the performance of two different equality comparison approaches.

**Alternative Approaches**

Other alternatives to compare could include:

1. Using a custom implementation for equality checking, similar to Lodash's `isEqual` function.
2. Comparing objects using a hash table-based approach (e.g., storing object properties in an array and comparing them).
3. Using a library like **lodash.isDeepEqual** or **jsdiff** for more complex comparisons.

Keep in mind that the choice of approach depends on the specific use case, performance requirements, and complexity of the data being compared.

Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify Equality Comparison for complex objects (version: 0)

Test on isEqual performance

Comparing performance of: `_.isEqual vs JSON.stringify`

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

_.isEqual

JSON.stringify

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 71 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 60 runs

Firefox 11 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

Lodash.isEqual vs JSON.stringify Equality Comparison for complex objects (version: 0)

Test on isEqual performance

Comparing performance of: _.isEqual vs JSON.stringify

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

_.isEqual

JSON.stringify

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 71 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 60 runs

Firefox 11 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

Related benchmarks

Comparing performance of: `_.isEqual vs JSON.stringify`