reusify

What is reusify?

The reusify npm package is designed to create a fast and low overhead object pool. It allows developers to reuse objects instead of creating new ones, which can help in reducing garbage collection pressure and improving performance in Node.js applications.

What are reusify's main functionalities?

Object Pooling

This feature allows you to create a pool of reusable objects. The `get` method is used to acquire an object from the pool, and the `release` method is used to return the object to the pool for future reuse.

const reusify = require('reusify')

function MyObject () {
  this.next = null
}

const pool = reusify(MyObject)

function acquire () {
  const obj = pool.get()
  obj.foo = 'bar'
  release(obj)
}

function release (obj) {
  pool.release(obj)
}

Other packages similar to reusify

generic-pool

generic-pool is a robust and generic resource pooling library. It is similar to reusify in that it manages a pool of resources that can be reused. However, generic-pool is more feature-rich and supports priority queuing, object creation with factory functions, and more advanced resource validation and management features.

pool2

pool2 is another resource pooling library that offers features like deferred resource creation, soft limits on resource creation, and automatic resource validation and eviction. It provides more control over the resource lifecycle compared to reusify, which is focused on simple object reuse.

object-pool

object-pool is a minimalistic object pooling library. It shares the same basic concept with reusify, aiming to reduce the overhead of object creation by reusing objects. However, object-pool has a different API and may not be as optimized for performance as reusify.

README

reusify

Reuse your objects and functions for maximum speed. This technique will make any function run ~10% faster. You call your functions a lot, and it adds up quickly in hot code paths.

$ node benchmarks/createNoCodeFunction.js
Total time 53133
Total iterations 100000000
Iteration/s 1882069.5236482036

$ node benchmarks/reuseNoCodeFunction.js
Total time 50617
Total iterations 100000000
Iteration/s 1975620.838848608

The above benchmark uses fibonacci to simulate a real high-cpu load. The actual numbers might differ for your use case, but the difference should not.

The benchmark was taken using Node v6.10.0.

This library was extracted from fastparallel.

Example

var reusify = require('reusify')
var fib = require('reusify/benchmarks/fib')
var instance = reusify(MyObject)

// get an object from the cache,
// or creates a new one when cache is empty
var obj = instance.get()

// set the state
obj.num = 100
obj.func()

// reset the state.
// if the state contains any external object
// do not use delete operator (it is slow)
// prefer set them to null
obj.num = 0

// store an object in the cache
instance.release(obj)

function MyObject () {
  // you need to define this property
  // so V8 can compile MyObject into an
  // hidden class
  this.next = null
  this.num = 0

  var that = this

  // this function is never reallocated,
  // so it can be optimized by V8
  this.func = function () {
    if (null) {
      // do nothing
    } else {
      // calculates fibonacci
      fib(that.num)
    }
  }
}

The above example was intended for synchronous code, let's see async:

var reusify = require('reusify')
var instance = reusify(MyObject)

for (var i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
  getData(i, console.log)
}

function getData (value, cb) {
  var obj = instance.get()

  obj.value = value
  obj.cb = cb
  obj.run()
}

function MyObject () {
  this.next = null
  this.value = null

  var that = this

  this.run = function () {
    asyncOperation(that.value, that.handle)
  }

  this.handle = function (err, result) {
    that.cb(err, result)
    that.value = null
    that.cb = null
    instance.release(that)
  }
}

Also note how in the above examples, the code, that consumes an istance of MyObject, reset the state to initial condition, just before storing it in the cache. That's needed so that every subsequent request for an instance from the cache, could get a clean instance.

Why

It is faster because V8 doesn't have to collect all the functions you create. On a short-lived benchmark, it is as fast as creating the nested function, but on a longer time frame it creates less pressure on the garbage collector.

Other examples

If you want to see some complex example, checkout middie and steed.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Trevor Norris for getting me down the rabbit hole of performance, and thanks to Mathias Buss for suggesting me to share this trick.

License

MIT