console.time & console.timeEnd

By  on  

The console.time and console.timeEnd methods allow developers to time any routine and get a duration in milliseconds.  Since JavaScript performance is becoming increasingly important, it's good to know basic techniques for benchmarking routines.  One of the most basic benchmarking tools is console.time with console.timeEnd.

console.time starts the time and console.timeEnd stops the timer and spits out the duration:

// Kick off the timer
console.time('testForEach');

// (Do some testing of a forEach, for example)

// End the timer, get the elapsed time
console.timeEnd('testForEach');

// 4522.303ms (or whatever time elapsed)

Passing a timer name as the first argument allows you to manage concurrent timers.  The console.timeEnd call immediately spits out the elapsed time in milliseconds.

There are more advanced techniques for performance testing and benchmarking but console.time/timeEnd provide a quick manual method for speed testing!

Recent Features

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos

    The <canvas> element has been a revelation for the visual experts among our ranks.  Canvas provides the means for incredible and efficient animations with the added bonus of no Flash; these developers can flash their awesome JavaScript skills instead.  Here are nine unbelievable canvas demos that...

  • By
    9 More Mind-Blowing WebGL Demos

    With Firefox OS, asm.js, and the push for browser performance improvements, canvas and WebGL technologies are opening a world of possibilities.  I featured 9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos and then took it up a level with 9 Mind-Blowing WebGL Demos, but I want to outdo...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

  1. no necessary label, the default label is default

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!