Copyright © 2016 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang). W3C liability, trademark and permissive document license rules apply.
This specification defines an interface to help web developers measure the performance of their applications by giving them access to high precision timestamps.
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.
User Timing Level 2 replaces the first version of [USER-TIMING] and includes:
PerformanceMark
and PerformanceMeasure
in Web Workers [WORKERS] via integration with [HR-TIME-2];
PerformanceTiming
interface defined in [NAVIGATION-TIMING-2].
This document was published by the Web Performance Working Group as a First Public Working Draft. This document is intended to become a W3C Recommendation.
If you wish to make comments regarding this document, the GitHub repository is preferred for discussion of this specification. There is also a public mailing list public-web-perf@w3.org (archives). When sending e-mail, please use [UserTiming]
at the start of your email's subject. All comments are welcome.
Publication as a First Public Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.
This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
This document is governed by the 1 September 2015 W3C Process Document.
This section is non-normative.
Web developers need the ability to assess and understand the performance characteristics of their applications. While JavaScript provides a mechanism to measure application latency (retrieving the current timestamp from the Date.now()
method), the precision of this timestamp varies between user agents.
This document defines the PerformanceMark
and
PerformanceMeasure
interfaces, and extensions to the
Performance
interface, which expose a high precision, monotonically increasing timestamp so they can better measure the performance characteristics of their applications.
The following script shows how a developer can use the interfaces defined in this document to obtain timing data related to developer scripts.
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>User Timing example</title>
</head>
<body onload="init()">
<script>
function init()
{
performance.mark("startTask1");
doTask1(); // Some developer code
performance.mark("endTask1");
performance.mark("startTask2");
doTask2(); // Some developer code
performance.mark("endTask2");
measurePerf();
}
function measurePerf()
{
var perfEntries = performance.getEntriesByType("mark");
for (var i = 0; i < perfEntries.length; i++)
{
if (window.console) console.log("Name: " + perfEntries[i].name +
" Entry Type: " + perfEntries[i].entryType +
" Start Time: " + perfEntries[i].startTime +
" Duration: " + perfEntries[i].duration + "\n");
}
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
[PERFORMANCE-TIMELINE-2] defines two mechanisms that can be used to retrieve recorded metrics: getEntries()
and getEntriesByType()
methods, and the
PerformanceObserver
interface. The former is best suited for cases where you want to retrieve a particular metric by name at a single point in time, and the latter is optimized for cases where you may want to receive notifications of new metrics as they become available.
As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring guidelines, diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.
The key words MAY and MUST are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
Some conformance requirements are phrased as requirements on attributes, methods or objects. Such requirements are to be interpreted as requirements on user agents.
The IDL fragments in this specification MUST be interpreted as required for conforming IDL fragments, as described in the Web IDL specification. [WebIDL]
Performance
Interface
partial interface Performance {
void mark
(DOMString markName);
void clearMarks
(optional DOMString markName);
void measure
(DOMString measureName,
optional DOMString startMark,
optional DOMString endMark);
void clearMeasures
(optional DOMString measureName);
};
The mark(markName)
method stores a timestamp with the associated name (a "mark"). It MUST run these steps:
Window
object and markName uses the same name as a read only attribute in the
PerformanceTiming
interface [NAVIGATION-TIMING-2], throw a SyntaxError
.PerformanceMark
object.name
to markName.
entryType
to DOMString "mark"
.
startTime
to be the value that would be returned by the Performance
object's now()
method.duration
to 0
.PerformanceMark
object.PerformanceMark
object to the performance entry buffer.The clearMarks(markName)
removes stored timestamp with the associated name. It MUST run these steps:
PerformanceMark
objects from the performance entry buffer.PerformanceMark
objects listed in the performance entry buffer whose name matchesmarkName.The measure(measureName, startMark, endMark)
method stores the DOMHighResTimeStamp
duration between two marks along with the associated name (a "measure"). It MUST run these steps:
Performance
object's now()
method. Otherwise let end time be the value of the startTime
attribute from the most recent occurence PerformanceMark
object in the performance entry buffer whose name
matches value endMark.startTime
attribute from the most recent occurence PerformanceMark
object in the performance entry buffer whose name
matches value startMark.PerformanceMeasure
object.name
to measureName.
entryType
to DOMString "measure"
.
startTime
to start time.duration
to the duration from start time to end time. The resulting duration value MAY be negative.PerformanceMeasure
object.PerformanceMeasure
object to the performance entry buffer.The clearMeasures(measureName)
removes stored timestamp with the associated name. It MUST run these steps:
PerformanceMeasure
objects in the performance entry buffer.PerformanceMeasure
objects listed in the performance entry buffer whose name
matches measureName.PerformanceMark
Interface
The PerformanceMark
interface also exposes marks created via the Performance.mark
method to the
Performance Timeline [PERFORMANCE-TIMELINE-2].
[Exposed=(Window,Worker)]
interface PerformanceMark
: PerformanceEntry {
};
The PerformanceMark
interface extends the following attributes of the PerformanceEntry interface:
The name
attribute will return the mark's name.
The entryType
attribute will return the DOMString
"mark"
.
The startTime
attribute will return a DOMHighResTimeStamp
with the mark's time value [HR-TIME-2].
The duration
attribute will return a DOMHighResTimeStamp
of value 0.
PerformanceMeasure
Interface
The PerformanceMeasure
interface also exposes measures created via the Performance.measure
method to the Performance Timeline [PERFORMANCE-TIMELINE-2].
[Exposed=(Window,Worker)]
interface PerformanceMeasure
: PerformanceEntry {
};
The PerformanceMeasure
interface extends the following attributes of the PerformanceEntry interface:
The name
attribute will return the measure's name.
The entryType
attribute will return the DOMString
"measure"
.
The startTime
attribute will return a DOMHighResTimeStamp
with the measure's start mark [HR-TIME-2].
The duration
attribute will return a DOMHighResTimeStamp
with the duration of the measure.
This section is non-normative.
The interfaces defined in this specification expose potentially sensitive timing information on specific JavaScript activity of a page. Please refer to [HR-TIME-2] for privacy and security considerations of exposing high-resolution timing information.
Because the web platform has been designed with the invariant that any script included on a page has the same access as any other script included on the same page, regardless of the origin of either scripts, the interfaces defined by this specification do not place any restrictions on recording or retrieval of recorded timing information - i.e. a user timing mark or measure recorded by any script included on the page can be read by any other script running on the same page, regardless of origin.
Thanks to James Simonsen, Jason Weber, Nic Jansma, Philippe Le Hegaret, Karen Anderson, Steve Souders, Sigbjorn Vik, Todd Reifsteck, and Tony Gentilcore for their contributions to this work.