# Testing speed of xml parsing in MRI and JRuby **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 30, 2008, 11:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/testing-speed-of-xml-parsing-in-mri-and-jruby/133363 "2008-03-30T23:03:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![stepheneb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/71e660/32.png) [@stepheneb](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stepheneb)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2008, 11:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/testing-speed-of-xml-parsing-in-mri-and-jruby/133363/1 "2008-03-30T23:03:28Z")
FYI: I’m hoping to use Hpricot for general XML processing instead of Rexml or Libxml in some projects and I wanted to find out the speeds of different XML parsers in MRI and JRuby. I was very impressed by how much faster JRuby is when running in Java 1.6 than in 1.5. In Java 1.6 Hpricot in JRuby was only 10% slower than in MRI. So far I’ve only got one test parsing a 100k xml file and counting a certain type of element. I’m planning to add more tests that cover the kind of processing I need to do. This is the test: Do this 100 times: - parse a 100k XML file and count the 466 leaf nodes The results shown below are the times after a “rehearsal”. The times for JRuby are faster when the JVM has been “warmed-up”. The rehearsal has no effect on the MRI timings. ## Platform and method total time JRuby (Java 1.6.0) jdom\_document\_builder 0.363 MRI: libxml 0.389 JRuby (Java 1.6.0 server) jdom\_document\_builder 0.412 JRuby (server) jdom\_document\_builder 0.617 JRuby: jdom\_document\_builder 1.451 MRI: hpricot 2.056 JRuby (Java 1.6.0 server) hpricot 2.272 JRuby (Java 1.6.0) hpricot 2.273 JRuby (server) hpricot 3.447 JRuby: hpricot 6.198 JRuby (Java 1.6.0 server) rexml 6.251 JRuby (Java 1.6.0) rexml 6.356 MRI: rexml 7.624 JRuby (server) rexml 9.609 JRuby: rexml 12.944 - I’d also like to add tests for Ruby 1.9. The timings reported here are taken from the second time the 100x loop is run for each platform/library test so the JVM should be warmed up. Tested on: MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4 GB memory running MacOS X 10.5.2 Ruby versions tested: MRI: ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [universal-darwin9.0] JRuby: ruby 1.8.6 (2008-03-20 rev 6255) [i386-jruby1.1RC3] on Java 1.5.0\_13 JRuby: ruby 1.8.6 (2008-03-20 rev 6255) [i386-jruby1.1RC3] on Java 1.6.0\_03 (Soylatte) Library versions MRI: libxml-ruby 0.5.4 hpricot 0.6 Library versions JRuby: hpricot 0.6.161 More details are available in thelinks below: Benchmark code and data checked into subversion here: [https://svn.concord.org/svn/projects/trunk/common/ruby/xml\_benchmarks](https://svn.concord.org/svn/projects/trunk/common/ruby/xml_benchmarks) Trac: [http://trac.cosmos.concord.org/projects/browser/trunk/common/ruby/xml\_benchmarks](http://trac.cosmos.concord.org/projects/browser/trunk/common/ruby/xml_benchmarks) - Hpricot uses code created by Ragel, a state machine compiler that can produce C or Java code, for the initial parsing. The Ragel =\> Java compiler can only produce one style of code generation and it is not the fastest. The style chosen by Hpricot for generating the C code produces a larger executable and is faster.