Benchmark: Encode html without creating html elements

Encode html without creating html elements (version: 0)

There are two way of encoding html elements. One is the create an html element and let the browser handle it. The second looks at every character passed in and then runs a regex match on it and replaces the chars with &#CHAR_CODE;.

Comparing performance of: EncodeByCreatingElement vs EncodeUsingRegex

Created: 7 years ago by: Guest

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HTML Preparation code:


<script src='https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/angular.js/1.6.5/angular.min.js'></script>

Script Preparation code:


function EncodeByCreatingElement(value) {
  var element = angular.element('<div></div>');
  element.text(value); // not chainable, see #1044
  return element.html();
}

var regex = /[\u00A0-\u9999<>\&]/g;
function EncodeUsingRegex(value) {
  return value.replace(regex, ['&#', "$&".charCodeAt(0),';'].join(''));
}

function getRandomUnicodeChar() {
  return String.fromCharCode(0x30A0 + Math.random() * (0x30FF-0x30A0+1));
}

Tests:

EncodeByCreatingElement
EncodeByCreatingElement(getRandomUnicodeChar())
EncodeUsingRegex
EncodeUsingRegex(getRandomUnicodeChar())

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
EncodeByCreatingElement
EncodeUsingRegex

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 7 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/129.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 129 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
EncodeByCreatingElement	665452.5 Ops/sec
EncodeUsingRegex	1844052.1 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 6 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

**Overview**

The provided JSON represents a JavaScript microbenchmark test case for measuring the performance of two different approaches to encoding HTML characters: creating an HTML element and letting the browser handle it, or using regular expressions to replace special characters.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark definition is divided into two parts:

1. **Script Preparation Code**: This code defines two functions:
	* `EncodeByCreatingElement(value)`: Creates an HTML element with the given value as its text content, and returns the HTML representation of the element.
	* `EncodeUsingRegex(value)`: Uses a regular expression to replace special characters in the input string with their corresponding HTML entities (`&#CHAR_CODE;`).
2. **Html Preparation Code**: This code includes a script tag that loads the AngularJS library (version 1.6.5).

**Options Compared**

The two options being compared are:

1. **Create an HTML element and let the browser handle it** (represented by `EncodeByCreatingElement(value)`): This approach creates an HTML element, sets its text content, and then returns the HTML representation of the element.
2. **Use regular expressions to replace special characters** (represented by `EncodeUsingRegex(value)`): This approach uses a regular expression to replace special characters in the input string with their corresponding HTML entities.

**Pros and Cons**

1. **Create an HTML element and let the browser handle it**:
	* Pros: Can be more efficient, as the browser can optimize the rendering of the HTML element.
	* Cons: Requires creating an extra HTML element, which may incur additional overhead.
2. **Use regular expressions to replace special characters**:
	* Pros: More straightforward and easy to implement, as it only involves a simple string replacement operation.
	* Cons: May be slower due to the regular expression engine's complexity.

**Library and Special JS Features**

1. The `angular.element` function is used in the `EncodeByCreatingElement(value)` function. AngularJS is a JavaScript framework that provides a rich set of features for building web applications, including templating, dependency injection, and services.
2. There are no special JavaScript features or syntax explicitly mentioned in this benchmark definition.

**Other Considerations**

1. The benchmark definition assumes that the input string `value` contains Unicode characters, which may not be the case in all scenarios.
2. The use of AngularJS library is specific to this benchmark and may not be relevant to other benchmarks or applications.

**Alternatives**

Other alternatives for encoding HTML characters might include:

1. Using a library like jQuery's `html()` method, which provides a more concise way to set the innerHTML of an element.
2. Implementing a custom solution using JavaScript's built-in string manipulation functions (e.g., `substring()`, `replace()`, etc.).
3. Utilizing browser-specific APIs or Web Workers for parallel processing and optimization.

These alternatives would require modifications to the benchmark definition, but would provide different trade-offs in terms of performance, complexity, and maintainability.

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