Benchmark: Object.keys VS JSON.stringify() for empty objects and arrays

Script Preparation code:

var obj = {}
var arr = [];

Tests:

Object.keys()
Object.keys(arr) === 0 Object.keys(obj) === 0
JSON.stringify()
JSON.stringify(obj) === "{}" JSON.stringify(arr) === "[]"

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Object.keys()
JSON.stringify()

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/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 112 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Object.keys()	3901229.0 Ops/sec
JSON.stringify()	2121009.8 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one month ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided benchmark definition and test cases to understand what is being tested.

**Benchmark Definition:**
The benchmark compares two methods for checking if an object or array is empty:

1. `Object.keys()`: This method returns an array of strings representing the property names (or keys) of an object. If the object is empty, it will return an empty array.
2. `JSON.stringify()`: This method converts a value to a JSON string. For objects and arrays, it will convert them to `{}` or `[]`, respectively, if they are empty.

**Options Compared:**
The benchmark compares the performance of these two methods:

* `Object.keys()` with an object (`obj`)
* `JSON.stringify()` with an object (`obj`)
* `Object.keys()` with an array (`arr`)
* `JSON.stringify()` with an array (`arr`)

**Pros and Cons:**

* **Object.keys()**: This method is generally slower than `JSON.stringify()` because it iterates over the properties of the object, whereas `JSON.stringify()` can use optimized internal algorithms to quickly determine if the value is empty.
* **JSON.stringify():** This method is faster because it uses a more efficient algorithm that can take advantage of the object's properties and data type. However, this approach may not work correctly for all objects or arrays (e.g., those with complex data structures).

**Other Considerations:**

* The benchmark uses the `var` keyword to declare variables, which is outdated in modern JavaScript. A more modern approach would use `let` or `const`.
* The HTML preparation code is empty (`null`), which suggests that this benchmark may not be applicable in a web browser environment.

**Test Case Libraries and Features:**

* None mentioned in the provided benchmark definition.

**Additional Considerations for Test Users:**

If you're familiar with JavaScript, it's worth noting that `Object.keys()` can throw an error if the object has circular references or is an instance of a class. In contrast, `JSON.stringify()` will attempt to serialize the entire value, which may be desirable in certain cases.

**Other Alternatives:**

In modern JavaScript, you could use more efficient approaches to check for emptiness:

* For objects: Use the `Object.keys()` method with a conditional statement to check if the array of keys is empty. Alternatively, you can use `Object.values()`, `Object.entries()`, or other methods that provide additional insights into an object's structure.
* For arrays: Use the `length` property directly to check if the array is empty.

Example:
```javascript
function isEmptyArray(arr) {
  return arr.length === 0;
}
```
Keep in mind that these alternatives may not be exactly what the original benchmark was testing, but they provide a more modern and efficient way to perform similar checks.

Related benchmarks:

Object.keys VS JSON.stringify() for empty objects and arrays (version: 0)

You don't need to make add for loops in your test scenarios, the benchmark does it itself.

Comparing performance of: Object.keys() vs JSON.stringify()

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Object.keys()

JSON.stringify()

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one month ago):