How to get the size of a JavaScript object?

Question

I have re-factored the code in my original answer. I have removed the recursion and removed the assumed existence overhead.

function roughSizeOfObject( object ) {

    var objectList = [];
    var stack = [ object ];
    var bytes = 0;

    while ( stack.length ) {
        var value = stack.pop();

        if ( typeof value === 'boolean' ) {
            bytes += 4;
        }
        else if ( typeof value === 'string' ) {
            bytes += value.length * 2;
        }
        else if ( typeof value === 'number' ) {
            bytes += 8;
        }
        else if
        (
            typeof value === 'object'
            && objectList.indexOf( value ) === -1
        )
        {
            objectList.push( value );

            for( var i in value ) {
                stack.push( value[ i ] );
            }
        }
    }
    return bytes;
}

The Google Chrome Heap Profiler allows you to inspect object memory use.

You need to be able to locate the object in the trace which can be tricky. If you pin the object to the Window global, it is pretty easy to find from the "Containment" listing mode.

In the attached screenshot, I created an object called "testObj" on the window. I then located in the profiler (after making a recording) and it shows the full size of the object and everything in it under "retained size".

More details on the memory breakdowns.

In the above screenshot, the object shows a retained size of 60. I believe the unit is bytes here.

I just wrote this to solve a similar (ish) problem. It doesn't exactly do what you may be looking for, ie it doesn't take into account how the interpreter stores the object.

But, if you are using V8, it should give you a fairly ok approximation as the awesome prototyping and hidden classes lick up most of the overhead.

function roughSizeOfObject( object ) {

    var objectList = [];

    var recurse = function( value )
    {
        var bytes = 0;

        if ( typeof value === 'boolean' ) {
            bytes = 4;
        }
        else if ( typeof value === 'string' ) {
            bytes = value.length * 2;
        }
        else if ( typeof value === 'number' ) {
            bytes = 8;
        }
        else if
        (
            typeof value === 'object'
            && objectList.indexOf( value ) === -1
        )
        {
            objectList[ objectList.length ] = value;

            for( i in value ) {
                bytes+= 8; // an assumed existence overhead
                bytes+= recurse( value[i] )
            }
        }

        return bytes;
    }

    return recurse( object );
}

Sometimes I use this to flag really big objects that might be going to the client from the server. It doesn't represent the in memory footprint. It just gets you approximately what it'd cost to send it, or store it.

Also note, it's slow, dev only. But for getting an ballpark answer with one line of code it's been useful for me.

roughObjSize = JSON.stringify(bigObject).length;