Methodology

Benchmark contents

This page contains parsing and rendering benchmark of Cottle compared to other template engines, using BenchmarkDotNet library.

Parsing benchmark measures the time needed to transform a template stored as a string into an in-memory object that can be passed input data for rendering. This part is usually the most time consuming, which is why result should be cached by client application.

Rendering benchmark measures the time needed to render a parsed template into a string output, taking variable input data at render time.

Same template source code was used for both benchmarks and adapted to every template engine library. Here is the Cottle version of this source code:

<ul id='products'>
  {for product in products:
    <li>
      <h2>{product.name}</h2>
      <p>{slice(product.description, 0, 15)} - Only {format(product.price, "n:f1", "en-US")}$</p>
    </li>
  }
</ul>

Template is then rendered with an input context built with an array of 5 items as the products variable. Full benchmark source code can be found here.

Template engines

• Cottle v2.0.9 (see discussion about Cottle)
• DotLiquid v2.2.692
• Fluid v2.4.0
• Mustachio v2.1.0 (see discussion about Mustachio)
• RazorLight v2.3.1
• Scriban v5.7.0

Result

Benchmark configuration

BenchmarkDotNet=v0.13.5, OS=Windows 10 (10.0.19044.2728/21H2/November2021Update)
Intel Core i7-7700K CPU 4.20GHz (Kaby Lake), 1 CPU, 8 logical and 4 physical cores
.NET SDK=7.0.102
  [Host]     : .NET 7.0.2 (7.0.222.60605), X64 RyuJIT AVX2
  DefaultJob : .NET 7.0.2 (7.0.222.60605), X64 RyuJIT AVX2

Benchmark scores

Parsing and rendering benchmark, scores are expressed in microseconds per operation.

Other libraries were considered in this benchmark but not included as their performance results are too far away and would impact graph scale too much:

• RazorEngineCore v2022.1.2 (render time is over 6000% of Cottle, see #149)

Discussion

About Cottle

Cottle results were measured using default document compiler (method Document.CreateDefault) & no optimizer for compilation benchmark, and native document compiler (method Document.CreateNative) for rendering benchmark to maximize performances.

About Mustachio

Function calls could not be adapted to Mustachio benchmark due to the logic-less approach of the library. These functions were however required for formatting price floating point values to strings, so source code for Mustachio is not a 1:1 equivalent to the reference version. Formatting was pre-applied in C# code instead, resulting in an artificial slight performance boost in favor of Mustachio due to this processing not being considered as part of the measurement.