Benchmark: object keys vs stringify

HTML Preparation code:

<!--your preparation HTML code goes here-->

Script Preparation code:

function makeTestData() { return { name: "Matheus de Sousa Martins", age: 30, phone: "999999999999" }; }

Tests:

stringify
JSON.stringify(makeTestData())
keys
Object.keys(makeTestData())

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
stringify
keys

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:133.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/133.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 133 on Mac OS X 10.15

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
stringify	5885156.0 Ops/sec
keys	23061804.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

In the provided benchmark data, two approaches are being compared for handling and processing JavaScript objects: using `JSON.stringify()` and using `Object.keys()`.

### Benchmark Overview

1. **`JSON.stringify(makeTestData())`**:
   - **Purpose**: This method converts a JavaScript object into a JSON string. It serializes the object, which can be useful for data transmission (e.g., over networks) or for storage (e.g., in databases).
   - **Pros**:
     - Useful for sending data over the network or saving in a string format.
     - Handles nested objects, arrays, and can also convert unsupported types into a JSON format.
   - **Cons**:
     - Performance overhead due to serialization work; it can be slower than simply retrieving keys.
     - The result is a string, which may require further parsing or manipulation if further operations on the object are needed.
     - Cannot serialize functions or symbols.
  
2. **`Object.keys(makeTestData())`**:
   - **Purpose**: This method returns an array of a given object's own enumerable property names (keys). It is useful when you only need to know the property's names rather than their values.
   - **Pros**:
     - Much faster operation as it only retrieves keys instead of processing the entire object contents.
     - Provides a quick way to evaluate the structure of an object.
   - **Cons**:
     - Does not return values; therefore, if the values are also needed, a separate function call is required.
     - Only retrieves keys of the object; does not deep dive into nested structures or arrays.

### Performance Results

Based on the benchmark results:
- The `Object.keys()` method performed significantly better than `JSON.stringify()`, with `23061804.0` executions per second compared to `5885156.0` executions per second for `JSON.stringify()`. 
- This performance difference can be attributed to the nature of the operations: `Object.keys()` is a straightforward retrieval operation, while `JSON.stringify()` involves more complex data handling and conversion.

### Other Considerations and Alternatives

1. **Alternatives to `JSON.stringify()`**: 
   - For simple objects, you might use `Object.entries()` if you need both keys and values. 
   - `JSON.stringify()` could be replaced by libraries like `fast-json-stringify` which optimize for speed when serializing data.

2. **Alternatives to `Object.keys()`**:
   - If you also need the values with keys, `Object.entries()` could be more suitable, as it returns both key-value pairs in an array format.
   - If you're interested in all properties, including those in the prototype chain, you might consider using `for...in` loop.

3. **Considerations**:
   - Performance may vary depending on the complexity of the objects and the size of the dataset being processed.
   - Depending on the requirements (just keys versus full serialization), the choice of method can greatly affect both speed and resource usage in an application.

This benchmark provides insightful comparisons that can guide decisions regarding JavaScript object handling in various scenarios, making it particularly useful for developers focusing on performance optimizations in their applications.

Related benchmarks:

object keys vs stringify (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: stringify vs keys

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

stringify

keys

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated one year ago):