Benchmark: _.isEmpty vs Object.keys.length (1000000)

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.4/lodash.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

window.obj = {};

for (var i = 0, len = 1000000; i < len; i++) {
  obj['key' + i] = 'value' + i;
}

Tests:

_.isEmpty
_.isEmpty(window.obj);
Object.keys().length
Object.keys(window.obj).length === 0;

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
_.isEmpty
Object.keys().length

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_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
_.isEmpty	9.1 Ops/sec
Object.keys().length	9.2 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The provided benchmark tests the performance of two methods for checking whether an object is empty in JavaScript. It compares the use of `_.isEmpty` from the Lodash library with a native approach using `Object.keys` to determine if an object has any keys.

### Options Compared

1. **Lodash `_.isEmpty`**
   - Usage: `_.isEmpty(window.obj);`
   - Purpose: This function checks if the passed object is empty. It returns `true` if the object has no properties and `false` otherwise.

2. **Native JavaScript `Object.keys().length`
   - Usage: `Object.keys(window.obj).length === 0;`
   - Purpose: This approach evaluates the number of enumerable properties of an object. It uses the `Object.keys` method to create an array of a given object's own enumerable property names and checks if the length of that array is zero.

### Pros and Cons

**Lodash `_.isEmpty`**
- **Pros**:
  - Readability: The code is more expressive and easier to understand at a glance, explicitly stating the intent to check for an empty object.
  - Handles edge cases: Lodash is well-tested and maintained, meaning corner cases in its implementation are likely addressed.
  
- **Cons**:
  - Performance: Using a library function can introduce overhead compared to native methods, which may lead to slower execution, especially at scale.
  - Dependency: Requires including Lodash in the project, adding to the bundle size and potential loading delays.

**Native JavaScript `Object.keys().length`**
- **Pros**:
  - Performance: Typically faster, as it leverages built-in JavaScript functionality that is optimized by browsers.
  - No external dependencies: This approach does not require any additional libraries, reducing project overhead and improving load times.

- **Cons**:
  - Slightly less readable than `_.isEmpty`, especially for those who are not as familiar with JavaScript's native methods.
  - Only works with objects; if used on non-object types, it may not return meaningful results without additional type checks.

### Library Description

The benchmark uses **Lodash**, a widely-used JavaScript utility library, that provides various functions for common programming tasks, including working with arrays, objects, and more. Its purpose is to simplify JavaScript programming by providing utility functions that handle edge cases and improve code readability.

### Other Considerations

- **Performance Variations**: The benchmark results showed that `Object.keys().length` had a marginally better execution speed compared to `_.isEmpty`. This outcome may vary across different environments, browsers, and object sizes, emphasizing the need to test in the specific deployment context.
- **Additional Alternatives**: Other alternatives for checking if an object is empty could include:
  - Using `JSON.stringify(obj) === '{}'`, which checks if the object converts to an empty JSON string but has performance drawbacks due to string conversion.
  - Using a loop: Manually iterating over the object's properties with a `for...in` loop and checking if any exist, though this is less elegant and potentially less performant than the aforementioned methods.

In conclusion, while `_.isEmpty` offers readability and utility, `Object.keys().length` is more performant and does not rely on external libraries, making it the preferable choice for performance-sensitive applications.

Related benchmarks:

_.isEmpty vs Object.keys.length (1000000) (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: _.isEmpty vs Object.keys().length

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

_.isEmpty

Object.keys().length

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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