Benchmark: lodash vs plain vanilla js performance on countby vs foreach using set

HTML Preparation code:

<script src='https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.5/lodash.min.js'></script>

Script Preparation code:

var products = {
                product1 : {Category: 'category1', Brand: 'brand1'},
                product2 : {Category: 'category1', Brand: 'brand2'},
                product3 : {Category: 'category2', Brand: 'brand3'},
                product4 : {Category: 'category2', Brand: 'brand3'}
         }
for(var i=5; i<900; i++) {
    (i%2==0) ? products['product'+i] = {Category: 'category'+(i-1), Brand: 'brand'+(i-1)} : 
                            products['product'+i] = {Category: 'category'+i, Brand: 'brand'+i};
}
var uniqueCategoriesPresentAcrossProducts = new Set();
var level = 'Category';
var count = 0;

Tests:

lodash countBy
_.countBy(products, level); Object.keys(products).length
vanilla js foreach Iter using set
Object.keys(products).forEach(product => uniqueCategoriesPresentAcrossProducts.add(products[product][level]) );

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
lodash countBy
vanilla js foreach Iter using set

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 5 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/142.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 142 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
lodash countBy	22816.0 Ops/sec
vanilla js foreach Iter using set	58397.4 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 benchmark definition and explanation.

**What is being tested?**

The test measures the performance of two approaches to count unique categories in an object:

1. **Lodash's `countBy` function**: This function groups objects by a specified key (in this case, `"Category"`). It returns an object where each key is a group and its value is an array of corresponding values.
2. **Vanilla JavaScript `forEach` iteration with a `Set` data structure**: This approach uses the `forEach` method to iterate over the object's keys and adds the corresponding category value to a `Set`. The `Set` automatically removes duplicates.

**Options compared**

The two options are compared in terms of their performance, measured by the number of executions per second (ExecutionsPerSecond).

**Pros and Cons:**

1. **Lodash's `countBy` function**:
	* Pros:
		+ Provides a concise and readable way to group objects.
		+ Handles nested objects automatically (not shown in this benchmark).
	* Cons:
		+ Adds an external dependency (the Lodash library), which may not be desirable for smaller projects or those with size constraints.
2. **Vanilla JavaScript `forEach` iteration with a `Set`**:
	* Pros:
		+ No additional dependencies required.
		+ Allows for fine-grained control over the iteration process.
	* Cons:
		+ Requires manual management of the `Set`, including handling duplicates.

**Library used:**

In this benchmark, Lodash is used as a third-party library. It's a popular utility library that provides a wide range of functions for common tasks, such as data manipulation and object manipulation.

**Special JS feature or syntax:**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntaxes being tested in this benchmark. The focus is on the performance comparison between two different approaches to achieve a specific result.

**Other alternatives:**

If you're interested in exploring alternative approaches for counting unique categories, some other options could be:

* Using `Array.prototype.reduce()` instead of `forEach` with a `Set`.
* Utilizing a library like Moment.js or Dateutil for date-related calculations.
* Implementing a custom solution using recursion or loops.

Keep in mind that the choice of approach depends on the specific requirements and constraints of your project.

Related benchmarks:

lodash vs plain vanilla js performance on countby vs foreach using set (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: lodash countBy vs vanilla js foreach Iter using set

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

lodash countBy

vanilla js foreach Iter using set

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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