Let's dive into the world of MeasureThat.net and explore what's being tested in this benchmark.

Benchmark Overview

The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of two approaches for extracting the domain from a URL: using the URL constructor and using a naive regular expression (regexp) approach.

Script Preparation Code

The script preparation code sets up a test environment by defining two variables:

• window.MY_URL: a sample URL string that includes a username, password, hostname, port, path, query parameters, and an anchor.
• window.RX_DOMAIN: a regular expression pattern that matches the domain part of the URL.

Html Preparation Code

There is no HTML preparation code provided in this benchmark, which means that the test is focused solely on the JavaScript implementation.

Benchmark Definition

The benchmark definition specifies two test cases:

1. URL constructor: uses the URL constructor to parse the MY_URL string and extract the hostname.
2. Naive regexp: uses a simple regular expression (RX_DOMAIN) to match the domain part of the MY_URL string.

Library

In this benchmark, we don't have any external libraries being used besides the built-in URL constructor in modern JavaScript browsers. The RX_DOMAIN variable is a custom regular expression pattern defined within the script.

Pros and Cons

Here's a brief analysis of each approach:

• URL constructor: This approach provides a more robust and standardized way to parse URLs, as it uses a widely supported API. However, it may be slower than the regexp approach due to its parsing overhead.
• Naive regexp: This approach is simpler and faster, but it relies on a custom regular expression pattern that may not cover all possible URL formats. It's also more prone to errors if the pattern doesn't match the expected format.

Other Considerations

When considering performance benchmarks like this one, keep in mind the following factors:

• Browser version: The benchmark is run on Chrome 69, which might affect the results due to changes in JavaScript engine optimizations or URL parsing algorithms.
• Device platform and OS: The test runs on a desktop environment with Windows as the operating system, which may influence performance compared to other platforms (e.g., mobile devices).
• Execution frequency: The benchmark measures executions per second, which indicates how fast each approach can process the input data.

Alternatives

If you're looking for alternative approaches or testing frameworks similar to MeasureThat.net, consider the following options:

• Benchmark.js: a lightweight JavaScript library for running benchmarks.
• Benchmarklib: a more comprehensive benchmarking framework that supports multiple languages and platforms.
• Jest-benchmark: an integration of Jest with benchmarking capabilities.

These alternatives may offer additional features or flexibility in designing your own benchmarks, but MeasureThat.net's simplicity and focus on JavaScript-specific aspects make it an excellent starting point for comparing performance characteristics.