Benchmark: document.location.hostname vs location.hostname

Tests:

document.location.hostname
document.location.hostname
location.hostname
location.hostname

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
document.location.hostname
location.hostname

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:137.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/137.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 137 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
document.location.hostname	1895147.2 Ops/sec
location.hostname	2147430.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark you've provided focuses on comparing the performance of two different ways to access the `hostname` property of the current document in JavaScript:

1. **`document.location.hostname`**
2. **`location.hostname`**

### Comparison of Options

1. **`document.location.hostname`**
   - This accesses the `location` property directly from the `document` object.
   - **Performance**: In this benchmark, accessing the hostname using `document.location.hostname` executed significantly faster than the alternative, with an execution rate of approximately **1,406,810 executions per second**.

2. **`location.hostname`**
   - This accesses the `hostname` directly via the global `location` object.
   - **Performance**: This approach was slower, coming in at approximately **947,381 executions per second**.

### Pros and Cons of Each Approach

**Pros of `document.location.hostname`:**
- **Performance**: As shown by the benchmark results, this method is generally faster.
- **Clarity**: Some developers might argue that accessing `location` through `document` clarifies that it's related to the document object context.

**Cons of `document.location.hostname`:**
- **Verbosity**: This method is slightly more verbose as it requires an additional reference to `document` which can make code longer.
  
**Pros of `location.hostname`:**
- **Simplicity**: It is shorter and cleaner, making it easier to read.
- **Standard Practice**: This approach is commonly used in examples and other codebases, which can be more familiar to developers.

**Cons of `location.hostname`:**
- **Performance**: As the benchmark shows, it is slower in execution compared to `document.location.hostname`.

### Other Considerations
- **Browser Compatibility**: Both methods are supported across all major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
- **Readability and Maintainability**: While performance can be critical in some scenarios, readability should also be considered, especially in codebases where maintainability is key and performance differences are negligible.
  
### Alternatives
While the benchmark is specific to these two methods of accessing the `hostname`, there are alternative ways to work with URLs in JavaScript, such as:
- Using the **URL API**:
  ```javascript
  const url = new URL(document.URL);
  console.log(url.hostname);
  ```
  This provides a more structured approach to manipulate URLs but might introduce additional overhead depending on the application context.
  
- **Using a Wrapper Library**: Although not strictly necessary for accessing the hostname, there are libraries like jQuery that offer methods to manage URL and DOM interactions, but this generally introduces more complexity and possible performance penalties due to abstraction.

The choice between these methods and alternatives will depend on the requirements for performance versus ease of coding in a given project context. The results from this benchmark suggest a clear preference for `document.location.hostname` when high performance is critical.

Related benchmarks:

document.location.hostname vs location.hostname (version: 1)

Comparing performance of: document.location.hostname vs location.hostname

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

document.location.hostname

location.hostname

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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