Benchmark: XHR vs Fetch for JSON

Tests:

XHR
const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhr.responseType = 'json'; xhr.open('GET', 'https://www.googleapis.com/discovery/v1/apis'); xhr.onload = () => console.log(xhr.response != null); xhr.send();
Fetch
fetch("https://www.googleapis.com/discovery/v1/apis") .then(resp => resp.json()) .then(data => console.log(data != null));

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
XHR
Fetch

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 25 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided benchmark test cases.

**Overview**

The benchmark tests two approaches for making HTTP requests: `XMLHttpRequest` (XHR) and the Fetch API. Both methods are used to retrieve data from a URL, in this case, an API endpoint.

**Benchmark Definition JSON**

The benchmark definition JSON contains three essential fields:

* `Name`: The name of the benchmark, which is "XHR vs Fetch for JSON".
* `Description`: An empty string, indicating that no description is provided.
* `Script Preparation Code` and `Html Preparation Code`: These fields are empty, meaning that no specific code needs to be executed before running the benchmark.

**Individual Test Cases**

There are two test cases:

1. **XHR (XMLHttpRequest)**:
	* The benchmark definition is a JavaScript code snippet that creates an XHR object, sets its response type to "json", opens a GET request to the specified API endpoint, and logs the response when it's received.
2. **Fetch**:
	* The benchmark definition is another JavaScript code snippet that uses the Fetch API to make a GET request to the same API endpoint. It uses the `then` method to parse the response as JSON and log the result.

**Library Used**

In both cases, no external library is used. Instead, these APIs are built into modern browsers.

**Special JS Feature/Syntax (Not applicable in this case)**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntax mentioned in either benchmark definition.

**Other Alternatives**

If you want to compare the performance of other HTTP request libraries or approaches, such as:

* `axios`
* `jQuery.ajax()`
* `fetch` with a library like `reqwest`
* A Node.js-based implementation using the `http` module

You can create additional benchmark test cases for these alternatives.

**Comparison Options**

When comparing XHR and Fetch, consider the following factors:

* **Performance**: Fetch is generally faster than XHR because it's a native API in modern browsers.
* **Error Handling**: Both APIs handle errors differently. XHR uses the `onerror` event to catch errors, while Fetch returns an error object if the response fails.
* **Caching**: Fetch has better caching support than XHR, which can result in faster subsequent requests.
* **Security**: Fetch is more secure than XHR due to its built-in support for CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) and its ability to handle errors in a more robust way.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

XHR:

Pros:

* Well-established API with good error handling
* Works in older browsers that don't support Fetch

Cons:

* Less efficient than Fetch due to its additional overhead
* Not as secure as Fetch due to CORS issues

Fetch:

Pros:

* Faster and more efficient than XHR
* More secure due to its built-in CORS support
* Better caching capabilities

Cons:

* Not available in older browsers without polyfills or workarounds
* Requires modern JavaScript features (ES6+)

I hope this explanation helps you understand the benchmark test case and provides a solid foundation for comparing XHR and Fetch!

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/116.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 116 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
XHR	18239.0 Ops/sec
Fetch	17056.6 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

XHR vs Fetch for JSON (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: XHR vs Fetch

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

XHR

Fetch

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 25 days ago):