fast-sort

fast-sort

Blazing fast array sorting that outperforms lodash sorting by ~2x (in some cases it's more then 5x). Take a look at the benchmark section for more information about performance.

fast-sort is part of js-flock library exported as single module. Please reference js-flock github repository for source code, issue opening, contributing or giving a star ;)

Under the hood sort use a native JavaScript sort. Usage of native sort implies that sorting is not necessarily stable and it also implies that input array is modified(sorted) same as it would be when applying native sort.

Fast sort higlights

• Sorting an array of objects by one or more properties
• Sorting flat arrays
• Sorting in multiple directions
• Easy to read syntax for asc and desc sorting
• Faster then other sort alternatives
• Undefined and null values are always sorted to bottom of list no matter if ordering is ascending or descending.

Example

  import sort from 'fast-sort';

  sort([1,4,2]).asc(); // sort array in ascending order [1, 2, 4]
  sort([1,4,2]).desc(); // sort array in descending order [4, 2, 1]

  // Sort persons [Object] ascending by firstName
  sort(users).asc(u => u.firstName);

  // Same as above (but bit more performant)
  // NOTE: sorting by string is avaliable from version [1.3.0]
  sort(users).asc('firstName');

  // If we wan't to sort by nested property we need to provide sort function
  // String alternative is only available for root level properties
  sort(users).desc(u => u.address.city);

  // Sort users by multiple properties
  sort(users).desc([
    'firstName', // Sort by first name
    'lastName', // Persons that have same firstName will be sorted by lastName
    u => u.address.city // NOTE: For nested properties we have to use function as 'address.city' is not valid property
  ]);

  // Sort in multiple directions
  // NOTE: Available from version [1.5.0]
  sort(persons).by([
    { asc: 'name' }
    { desc: 'age' }
    { asc: p => p.address.city }
  ]);

  // Sort by any custom logic e.g sort vip users first
  sort(users).asc(u => u.tags === 'vip' ? 1 : -1);

  // Sorting values that are not sortable will return same value back
  sort(null).asc(); // => null
  sort(33).desc(); // => 33

Benchmark

Benchmarking sort is not an easy task as there is so many different scenarios that can happen while sorting. Because of that 5 different benchmarks have been created to test how fast-sort is behaving on different inputs and sort scenarios. Each benchmark is run with different array sizes from small 100 items to large 100 000 items.

Every run of benchmark outputs different results but the results are constantly better then lodash sort and in following benchmark score ranges from 1.37x to 13.51x faster then lodash sort. This will vary on each benchmark run but it should not vary too much.

Benchmark scores

Benchmark has been run on:

• 16 GB Ram
• Intel® Core™ i5-4570 CPU @ 3.20GHz × 4
• Ubuntu 16.04
• Node 8.9.1

Running benchmark

To run benchmark on your PC follow steps from below

1. git clone https://github.com/snovakovic/js-flock.git
2. cd js-flock
3. npm install
4. npm run benchmark:sort

In case you notice any irregularities in benchmark or you want to add sort library to benchmark score please open issue here