Benchmark: JSON.parse vs object literal

Tests:

JSON.parse
var a = JSON.parse("{}")
object literal
var b = {}

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
JSON.parse
object literal

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 10 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:140.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/140.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 140 on Mac OS X 10.15

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
JSON.parse	16026024.0 Ops/sec
object literal	1586904064.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.1:latest, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into the explanation.

**What is being tested?**

The benchmark compares two ways to create an empty JavaScript object:

1. **JSON.parse**: This method creates an object from a JSON string. In this test case, it uses an empty JSON string (`"{}"`).
2. **Object literal**: This syntax directly creates an empty object using the `{}` notation.

**Pros and Cons of each approach:**

* **JSON.parse**:
	+ Pros: Can be used to create objects from a string representation (e.g., retrieved from a database or a file). It's also useful when working with JSON data.
	+ Cons: Creates an object from a string, which might not be efficient for large datasets. Additionally, it requires parsing the entire string before returning an object.
* **Object literal**:
	+ Pros: A lightweight and direct way to create objects. It's usually faster than using `JSON.parse` since it doesn't require parsing a string.
	+ Cons: Limited in its ability to create objects from existing data (e.g., JSON strings).

**Library used (none)**

In this case, no external library is being used.

**Special JS feature or syntax**

The test cases use the following JavaScript features:

1. **JSON.parse**: This is a built-in method that creates an object from a JSON string.
2. **Object literal ({})**: This is a shorthand way to create an empty object in JavaScript.

No special syntax or features are being used beyond these standard JavaScript methods and notation.

**Other alternatives**

While not directly compared in this benchmark, here are some alternative ways to create objects:

1. Using the `Object` constructor: `var obj = new Object();`
2. Creating an array with a single empty object: `[{}].length` (not recommended)
3. Using a library like Lodash or Underscore.js to create an empty object

Keep in mind that these alternatives might not be as efficient or straightforward as using `JSON.parse` or the object literal syntax.

Now, let's take a look at the benchmark results:

The "object literal" test case is running around 121x faster than the "JSON.parse" test case. This suggests that creating an empty object directly (using `{}`) is significantly more efficient than parsing an empty JSON string using `JSON.parse`.

Please note that these results might vary depending on the specific environment, browser, or Node.js version being used.

Related benchmarks:

JSON.parse vs object literal (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: JSON.parse vs object literal

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

JSON.parse

object literal

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.1:latest, generated one year ago):