IronBenchmarks

A tool to measure the performance of pretty much anything. After measurements, it creates an Excel file report with data on performance and memory allocation presented in charts.

How to use the repository

1. Clone the repository to your machine.
2. This application uses IronXL to create reports based on the data collected from benchmarking various actions. For IronXL to be operational you need to provide it with a License key. To do so add your license key to ..\IronBenchmarks\IronBenchmarks.App\appsettings.json file under the LicenseKeyIronXl property, removing the "PLACE YOUR KEY HERE" placeholder.
3. To use a pre-defined project for benchmarking BarCode, PDF or Excel libraries provide license keys for IronBarCode, IronPdf or IronXL. To do so in Visual Studio right-click the respective project, then click Manage User Secrets. In the file secrets.json add one of the following snippets:

{
  "AppConfig": {
    "LicenseKeyIronBarCode": "YOUR_KEY_HERE"
  }
}

{
  "AppConfig": {
    "LicenseKeyIronPdf": "YOUR_KEY_HERE"
  }
}

{
  "AppConfig": {
    "LicenseKeyIronXl": "YOUR_KEY_HERE"
  }
}

4. Check versions of NuGet packages used in the repository that are going to be benchmarked; update or downgrade to your taste/needs.
5. Select Release configuration.
6. Build the solution.
7. Run the app from the command line under ..\IronBenchmarks\IronBenchmarks.App\bin\Debug\net6.0 folder.

• To run Excel benchmarks use the -xl command-line argument
• To run PDF benchmarks use the -pdf command-line argument
• To run BarCode benchmarks use the -bc command-line argument

8. Look for a complete report under ..\IronBenchmarks\IronBenchmarks.App\bin\Debug\net6.0\Reports (path is controlled with ReportsFolder property in appsettings.json). Every app run will create a new report.
9. Look for saved results of benchmark work under ..\IronBenchmarks\IronBenchmarks.App\bin\Debug\net6.0\Results (path is controlled with ResultsFolderName property in appsettings.json). Files will be rewritten on each app run.

How to create new benchmarks

IronBenchmarks uses BenchmarkDotNet for measurements. To learn more about designing benchmarks with it check out the Articles section](https://benchmarkdotnet.org/articles/overview.html) on their website.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Reporting engine of IronBenchmarks is designed in such a way, that any class with a set of benchmarks is a class that measures one particular action by different libraries. For example, IronBenchmarks.ExcelLibs.Benchmarks.DateCellBenchmark class will measure how Aspose.Cells, IronXL, ClosedXML, EPPlus and NPOI will perform setting a date to a cell in a pre-created workbook. This design assumes, that each such class will contain an equal number of methods marked with Benchmark attribute. Names of methods should reflect the name of the library, that will perform benchmarked action in this method. The names of methods should be the same throughout the classes. To achieve that: it is recommended to use an abstract class from which the benchmark classes will inherit the structure of methods. For example, check out the IronBenchmarks.PdfLibs.Benchmarks.BenchmarkBase abstract class and how it is used in IronBenchmarks.PdfLibs.Benchmarks.SavingLargeFileBenchmark class.
2. In benchmark class override pre-defined in a base class methods and decorate them with Benchmark attribute.
3. To tell BenchmarkDotNet that it needs to gather memory allocation info, decorate your class with the MemoryDiagnoser attribute.
4. Decorate the benchmark class with the ShortRunJob attribute, if you need the runs for the methods of this class to be shorter, which will hinder the precision of the data, but will speed up the execution.
5. Create methods with IterationSetup and IterationCleanup to set up things before each call of the Benchmark marked method of your class and to clean up things after it was called. These methods will execute before and after EACH execution of the benchmark methods. For an example of how it is used check out IronBenchmarks.ExcelLibs.Benchmarks.Bases.SheetOperationsBenchmarkBase class.
6. In IronBenchmarks.App.Program class: add your class to the list of classes that will be run like so:

...
var barcodeSummaries = new List<Summary>
{
    BenchmarkRunner.Run<CreateBarcodeBenchmark>(),
    BenchmarkRunner.Run<MyNewBenchmark>(),
};
...

7. Repeat the steps from How to use the repository to see the results of the benchmarking of your new class.

Useful features

• Version 0.0.2 of IronBenchmarks allows appending the results of current benchmarking to the report created earlier. This is useful if you want to add new contenders to an already created report or (which is more important) to benchmark different versions of the same library. For example, you can run a benchmark for BarCode with IronBarCode v2022.11, then downgrade in the IronBenchmarks.BarCodeLibs IronBarCode v2022.9, build the solution again and run IronBenchmarks.App.exe with a -a or -append command-line argument. This will run your benchmarks on an older version but will append the results to the previous report, so you don't have to do it manually.
• You can tell ReportGenerator to add versions of libraries to the report. To do so check out the implementation of IronBenchmarks.App.Program.GetLibNamesWithVersions or pass the ReportGenerator a manually created Dictionary<string, string> where keys are the names of your benchmark contenders (!!!should be the same as the names of your benchmark methods!!!) and values are versions that you wish to see in the report. This will improve in future versions.

Notes

• IronBenchmarks.ExcelLibs is using the customized assembly of an older version of IronXL. It was renamed to IronXLOld.dll, all of its types' namespaces were renamed from IronXL to IronXLOld, and it is stored in an ..\IronBenchmarks\packages folder. It is added to IronBenchmarks.IronXL project as an assembly, not a NuGet package. To use another version of IronXL as IronXLOld perform a similar renaming procedure and replace ..\IronBenchmarks\packages\IronXLOld.dll with your version.
• The benchmarking process is really slow, so be prepared for the app to run for several minutes.
• If you plan to commit any changes to this public repository, please be sure to not include any sensitive information in the commit, such as License keys and so on. To add License keys discreetly, please use the User Secrets feature of Visual Studio.