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
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

  • By
    Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools

    MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does.  Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up.  I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own.  In any event...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create Twitter-Style Dropdowns Using MooTools

    Twitter does some great stuff with JavaScript. What I really appreciate about what they do is that there aren't any epic JS functionalities -- they're all simple touches. One of those simple touches is the "Login" dropdown on their homepage. I've taken...

  • By
    MooTools Clipboard Plugin

    The ability to place content into a user's clipboard can be extremely convenient for the user. Instead of clicking and dragging down what could be a lengthy document, the user can copy the contents of a specific area by a single click of a mouse.

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!