MongoDB Benchmarking Guide for Node.js with tinybench

If using Vitest, is possible in your project, we highly recommend using it instead of tinybench.

Click here to see how to use the MongoDB instrument with Vitest.

Make sure you are using the minimum required version of the plugin: @codspeed/tinybench-plugin>=3.0.0

All the code shown on this page is available in the CodSpeedHQ/codspeed-nestjs-mongodb repository. It uses the following technologies:

Sample application

We are going to use a simple NestJS application exposing a REST API to manage cats.

The following Cat model is defined:

src/cats/schemas/cat.schema.ts

import { Prop, Schema, SchemaFactory } from "@nestjs/mongoose";
import { HydratedDocument } from "mongoose";

export type CatDocument = HydratedDocument<Cat>;

@Schema()
export class Cat {
  @Prop({ index: 1, required: true })
  name: string;

  @Prop({ required: true })
  age: number;

  @Prop({ required: true })
  breed: string;
}

export const CatSchema = SchemaFactory.createForClass(Cat);

The CatsController exposes the following endpoints:

src/cats/cats.controller.ts

import { Controller, Get, Param } from "@nestjs/common";
import { CatsService } from "./cats.service";
import { Cat } from "./schemas/cat.schema";

@Controller("cats")
export class CatsController {
  constructor(private readonly catsService: CatsService) {}

  @Get("name/:name")
  async findByName(@Param("name") name: string): Promise<Cat[]> {
    return this.catsService.findByName(name);
  }

  @Get("breed/:breed")
  async findByBreed(@Param("breed") breed: string): Promise<Cat[]> {
    return this.catsService.findByBreed(breed);
  }
}

Complete setup with Docker

Setup dependencies

Install the @codspeed/tinybench-plugin:

npm install --save-dev @codspeed/tinybench-plugin

Create benchmarks

Let’s create a script that defines benchmarks on the cats endpoints of the application.

src/cats/cats.controller.e2e.bench.ts

import { faker } from "@faker-js/faker";
import { INestApplication } from "@nestjs/common";
import { getModelToken } from "@nestjs/mongoose";
import { Test } from "@nestjs/testing";
import { AppModule } from "app.module";
import { Model } from "mongoose";
import request from "supertest";
import { Bench } from "tinybench";
import { CatsFactory } from "./cats.factory";
import { Cat } from "./schemas/cat.schema";

faker.seed(1); // enforce the same seed, to remove randomness from generated data

const cats: Cat[] = Array.from({ length: 100 }, () => ({
  name: ["river", "felix", "toto", "marcel"][faker.number.int(3)],
  age: faker.number.int(20),
  breed: ["chausie", "toyger", "abyssinian", "birman"][faker.number.int(3)],
}));

export function registerCatControllerBenches(bench: Bench) {
  let app: INestApplication;
  let catsModel: Model<Cat>;
  let catsFactory: CatsFactory;

  // initialize the application before the benchmark
  async function beforeAll() {
    const moduleRef = await Test.createTestingModule({
      imports: [AppModule],
    }).compile();
    app = moduleRef.createNestApplication();
    catsModel = moduleRef.get(getModelToken(Cat.name));
    catsFactory = new CatsFactory(catsModel);
    await app.init();
    await catsFactory.createMany(cats);
  }
  // clean up the application after the benchmark
  async function afterAll() {
    await catsModel.deleteMany();
    await app.close();
  }

  bench.add(
    "GET /cats/name/:name",
    async () => {
      await request(app.getHttpServer()).get("/cats/name/river");
    },
    { beforeAll, afterAll }
  );

  bench.add(
    "GET /cats/breed/:breed",
    async () => {
      await request(app.getHttpServer()).get("/cats/breed/chausie");
    },
    { beforeAll, afterAll }
  );
}

Here we have defined 4 benchmarks for the cats endpoints:

GET /cats: retrieve all the cats
GET /cats/name/:name: retrieve all the cats with the given name
GET /cats/breed/:breed: retrieve all the cats with the given breed
GET /cats/age/greater/:age: retrieve all the cats with an age greater than the given age

We finally have to register the benchmarks in the src/bench.e2e.ts file:

src/bench.e2e.ts

import { withCodSpeed } from "@codspeed/tinybench-plugin";
import { registerCatControllerBenches } from "cats/cats.controller.e2e.bench";
import { Bench } from "tinybench";

const bench = withCodSpeed(new Bench());

(async () => {
  registerCatControllerBenches(bench);

  await bench.run();
  console.table(bench.table());
})();

Setup Docker locally

Add the following file to the root of the project:

docker-compose.yml

version: "3"

services:
  mongodb:
    image: mongo:latest
    environment:
      - MONGODB_DATABASE="test"
    ports:
      - 27017:27017
    volumes:
      - mongo:/data/db

volumes:
  mongo:

Run the following command to start the MongoDB instance:

docker-compose up -d

Run the benchmarks locally

To use tinybench, we recommend using ts-node with swc:

npm install --save-dev @swc/core @swc/helpers ts-node

To enforce using swc when running ts-node, add the following to your tsconfig.json:

tsconfig.json

{
  "ts-node": {
    "swc": true
  }
}

Add the following script to your package.json:

package.json

{
  "scripts": {
    "bench:e2e": "NODE_ENV=test ts-node --swc -r tsconfig-paths/register src/bench.e2e.ts"
  }
}

Run the following command to run the benchmarks:

$ pnpm bench:e2e

[CodSpeed] 4 benches detected but no instrumentation found, falling back to tinybench
┌─────────┬──────────────────────────────┬─────────┬────────────────────┬──────────┬─────────┐
│ (index) │          Task Name           │ ops/sec │ Average Time (ns)  │  Margin  │ Samples │
├─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────┼────────────────────┼──────────┼─────────┤
│    0    │    'GET /cats/name/:name'    │  '260'  │ 3840144.435868008  │ '±9.38%' │   131   │
│    1    │         'GET /cats'          │  '348'  │ 2870076.392037528  │ '±4.93%' │   175   │
│    2    │   'GET /cats/breed/:breed'   │  '489'  │ 2043167.1677803504 │ '±3.39%' │   245   │
│    3    │ 'GET /cats/age/greater/:age' │  '431'  │ 2318777.595405225  │ '±3.97%' │   216   │
└─────────┴──────────────────────────────┴─────────┴────────────────────┴──────────┴─────────┘

Run the benchmarks in the CI

Add the following file to the project:

.github/workflows/codspeed.yml

name: CodSpeed

on:
  # Run on pushes to the main branch
  push:
    branches:
      - "main"
  # Run on pull requests
  pull_request:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  benchmarks:
    name: Run benchmarks
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: pnpm/action-setup@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          cache: pnpm
          node-version-file: .nvmrc

      # easily setup a MongoDB cluster
      - uses: art049/mongodb-cluster-action@v0
        id: mongodb-cluster-action

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: pnpm install

      - name: Run benchmarks
        uses: CodSpeedHQ/action@v3
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.CODSPEED_TOKEN }}
          instruments: mongodb
          mongo-uri-env-name: MONGO_URL
          run: |
            pnpm bench:e2e
        env:
          # we need the MONGO_URL to be set in the environment before actually running
          # the benchmark command so we set it here instead of inside the `run` command
          MONGO_URI:
            ${{ steps.mongodb-cluster-action.outputs.connection-string }}

With this configuration, the CodSpeed MongoDB instrument will be activated and data from MongoDB queries will be sent to CodSpeed.

Setup using testcontainers

Instead of relying on an externally provided Docker instance, we can leverage testcontainers to start a MongoDB instance dynamically during the benchmarks.

For this setup, we assume that the state of the application is similar to the one described in the above section.

Setup tinybench + testcontainers

Install the testcontainers dependencies:

npm install --save-dev @testcontainers/mongodb

Change the src/bench.e2e.ts file to the following:

src/bench.e2e.ts

import { setupInstruments, withCodSpeed } from "@codspeed/tinybench-plugin";
import { MongoDBContainer } from "@testcontainers/mongodb";
import { registerCatControllerBenches } from "cats/cats.controller.tinybench";
import { Bench } from "tinybench";

async function setupDatabase() {
  const mongodbContainer = await new MongoDBContainer("mongo:7.0.5").start();
  const mongoUrl =
    mongodbContainer.getConnectionString() +
    "/test?replicaSet=rs0&directConnection=true";

  const { remoteAddr } = await setupInstruments({ mongoUrl });
  process.env.MONGO_URL = remoteAddr;
}

const bench = withCodSpeed(new Bench());

(async () => {
  await setupDatabase();

  registerCatControllerBenches(bench);

  await bench.run();
  console.table(bench.table());
})();

On macOS, we recommend using colima to run Docker containers. However there are issues using testcontainers on macOS.

To bypass those issues, some environment variables need to be set when running the tests:

Enforce a check that the correct environment variables are set

To make testcontainers work on macOS with colima, the following environment variables need to be set:

TESTCONTAINERS_DOCKER_SOCKET_OVERRIDE=/var/run/docker.sock NODE_OPTIONS="$NODE_OPTIONS --dns-result-order=ipv4first" <command>

We will add a function to enforce that they are set when running tinybench. Add the following function to your src/bench.e2e.ts file:

src/bench.e2e.ts

function checkColimaTestcontainersDarwin() {
  if (
    process.platform === "darwin" &&
    (process.env.TESTCONTAINERS_DOCKER_SOCKET_OVERRIDE === undefined ||
      !process.env.NODE_OPTIONS.includes("--dns-result-order=ipv4first"))
  ) {
    throw new Error(
      'On macOs, run with the following command to make testcontainers + colima work: `TESTCONTAINERS_DOCKER_SOCKET_OVERRIDE=/var/run/docker.sock NODE_OPTIONS="$NODE_OPTIONS --dns-result-order=ipv4first" <command>`'
    );
  }
}

And use it at the top of the setupDatabase function:

src/bench.e2e.ts

async function setupDatabase() {
  checkColimaTestcontainersDarwin();

  await setupMongoDB();
}

Now the execution will stop with an explicit error message if the environment variables are not set when running on macOS.

Run the benchmarks locally

You can now run the benchmarks locally without having to start a MongoDB instance:

pnpm bench:e2e

Run the benchmarks in the CI

You can now simplify the codspeed.yml file to the following:

Remove the mongodb-cluster-action step
Remove the mongo-uri-env-name input
Remove the MONGO_URI environment variable

.github/workflows/codspeed.yml

name: CodSpeed

on:
  # Run on pushes to the main branch
  push:
    branches:
      - "main"
  # Run on pull requests
  pull_request:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  benchmarks:
    name: Run benchmarks
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: pnpm/action-setup@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          cache: pnpm
          node-version-file: .nvmrc

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: pnpm install

      - name: Run benchmarks
        uses: CodSpeedHQ/action@v3
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.CODSPEED_TOKEN }}
          instruments: mongodb
          run: |
            pnpm bench:e2e

​Sample application

​Complete setup with Docker

​Setup dependencies

​Create benchmarks

​Setup Docker locally

​Run the benchmarks locally

​Run the benchmarks in the CI

​Setup using testcontainers

​Setup tinybench + testcontainers

​Run the benchmarks locally

​Run the benchmarks in the CI

Sample application

Complete setup with Docker

Setup dependencies

Create benchmarks

Setup Docker locally

Run the benchmarks locally

Run the benchmarks in the CI

Setup using testcontainers

Setup tinybench + testcontainers

Run the benchmarks locally

Run the benchmarks in the CI