Benchmark: URL.toString() vs String(URL)

HTML Preparation code:

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

Script Preparation code:

var url = new URL("http://localhost/?search=term");

Tests:

.toString()
let urls = []; for(let i = 0; i < 100; ++i) { urls.push(url.toString()); }
String()
let urls = []; for(let i = 0; i < 100; ++i) { urls.push(String(url)); }

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
.toString()
String()

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) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/133.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 133 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
.toString()	106844.7 Ops/sec
String()	62308.5 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

In the provided benchmark, the focus is on measuring the performance of two different methods for converting a JavaScript `URL` object into its string representation. The two options being compared are:

1. **`.toString()` Method from the `URL` object**
2. **`String()` function for type conversion**

### What is being tested

The benchmark tests how quickly each of these options can convert a URL object, specifically `new URL("http://localhost/?search=term")`, to a string, by executing each method 100 times in a loop.

### Options Comparison

1. **`.toString()` method**
   - **Pros**:
     - The `.toString()` method is purpose-built for the `URL` object. It is highly optimized and typically more efficient for this specific task.
     - It is clear and self-explanatory, making the code easier to read.
   - **Cons**:
     - It is only applicable to `URL` objects.

2. **`String()` function**
   - **Pros**:
     - `String()` can be used with various types of objects beyond just `URL`, which may suggest versatility in different contexts.
     - Useful when developers want to ensure a general conversion of any object to string format.
   - **Cons**:
     - It may not be as optimized as the specific method provided by the URL object.
     - It is less intuitive when reading the code in the context where a `URL` is being converted to its string representation.

### Performance Results

The results from the benchmark show:
- **`.toString()`** has an execution rate of approximately **106,844.67 executions per second**.
- **`String()`** has a significantly lower execution rate of approximately **62,308.50 executions per second**.

This indicates that the `.toString()` method is about **1.71 times faster** than using the `String()` function for this specific operation.

### Considerations

- **Performance**: The choice between the two options can have performance implications, particularly if the operation is performed frequently in an application, such as in loops or in resource-sensitive contexts (like rendering).
- **Readability**: Choosing the more contextually appropriate method enhances code readability and potential maintainability, since `.toString()` is explicit about its purpose regarding `URL` objects.
- **Compatibility**: Both methods are part of standard JavaScript and should work consistently across environments that support the ES6 standard that introduced the `URL` object.

### Alternatives

1. **Using Template Literals**: For some cases, developers may opt to use template strings like `` `${url}` ``, which relies on the default string conversion behavior but would generally be less optimized and less clear in intention when converting a `URL`.

2. **Manual String Construction**: Developers could parse the components of the `URL` object manually (e.g., `url.protocol + '//' + url.host + url.pathname`) but this approach would likely introduce potential errors and increase complexity in cases where the URL is intricate.

3. **Third-Party Libraries**: If more functionality is needed (e.g., URL manipulation, validation), libraries like `query-string` or `URL.js` could be used, but for simple string conversions, these would add unnecessary overhead.

In summary, the benchmark illustrates optimal ways to handle converting a `URL` object to a string, with `.toString()` proven to be the superior method in terms of performance for this particular scenario.

Related benchmarks:

URL.toString() vs String(URL) (version: 1)

Testing different ways to convert JavaScript's URL object to its string representation.

Comparing performance of: .toString() vs String()

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

.toString()

String()

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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