Benchmark: Dot property set notation VS Lodash.set(nested)

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash@4.17.5/lodash.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

var person = { name: 'Foo', lastName: 'Bar', nested: {nested: {nested: 1}} };

Tests:

Dot notation property setter
_.set(person, 'nested.nested.nested.age', 10)
Lodash.set
person.nested.nested.nested.age = 10

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Dot notation property setter
Lodash.set

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/133.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 133 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Dot notation property setter	5708307.5 Ops/sec
Lodash.set	141391072.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark described compares two different methods of setting properties on a nested object in JavaScript: using dot notation and using the Lodash library's `_.set` function.

### Approaches Compared

1. **Dot Notation Property Setter**: 
   - **Code**: `person.nested.nested.nested.age = 10;`
   - **Description**: This approach uses the dot notation to directly set the value of `age` on a deeply nested object structure. It is straightforward and performs direct property assignments on the object.

2. **Lodash.set**:
   - **Code**: `_.set(person, 'nested.nested.nested.age', 10);`
   - **Description**: This method uses the Lodash library's `set` function, which allows you to define the property path as a string and seamlessly set the intended property, even in cases where some nested properties might not exist initially.

### Pros and Cons

#### Dot Notation Property Setter

**Pros**:
- **Performance**: As evidenced by the benchmark results, this method is significantly faster, executing approximately 5708307.5 operations per second.
- **Simplicity**: Standard JavaScript syntax; no additional libraries are required, keeping it lightweight.

**Cons**:
- **Error-Prone**: If any part of the nested structure doesn’t exist, it will throw an error (e.g., if `nested` or `nested.nested` doesn't exist).
- **Readability**: Deeply nested assignments can become hard to read, especially when the hierarchy is complex.

#### Lodash.set

**Pros**:
- **Flexibility**: Can set properties on paths that might not exist yet, creating intermediate objects as necessary.
- **Readability**: The string path allows for clearer intention of nesting, which may help with understanding the code.

**Cons**:
- **Performance Overhead**: The benchmark shows its performance at approximately 141391072 operations per second, indicating that while it’s still fast, it is slower than using dot notation.
- **Dependency**: Requires importing the Lodash library, making it slightly heavier on dependencies.

### Other Considerations

1. **Use Cases**: 
   - If performance is paramount and you're sure of the existence of properties, use dot notation.
   - If dealing with complex objects or where the structure may change, Lodash is a safer option to avoid potential runtime errors.

2. **Alternatives**:
   - **Native JavaScript Alternatives**: JavaScript objects also support the bracket notation (`person['nested']['nested']['nested']['age'] = 10;`), which allows dynamic property assignment but does not mitigate errors if properties in the chain are missing.
   - **Proxy or Immutable.js**: These are other libraries or tools which might be considered for more complex state management or to handle immutability but involve more complexity than the direct comparisons here.

3. **Library**: **Lodash**
   - A popular utility library in JavaScript that provides a range of functions to manipulate arrays, numbers, objects, strings, etc.
   - Particularly useful for dealing with deep data structures or performing complex operations that may require concise and clear function calls.

Overall, the benchmark presents a clear distinction between using native JavaScript methods and employing a utility library, highlighting performance differences while considering the trade-offs in flexibility and reliability.

Related benchmarks:

Dot property set notation VS Lodash.set(nested) (version: 1)

Compares different approaches to set an object property

Comparing performance of: Dot notation property setter vs Lodash.set

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Dot notation property setter

Lodash.set

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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