Several small updates: merge updates then apply vs. apply all updates directly

1

Is it faster to merge the updates before applying to the Doc? Does it make any difference?

Thanks.

2

If you have many small update actions, it is recommended that you find a balance between the number of updates and the size of updates, which may have a certain impact on network transmission.

For example, when you need to merge multiple small updates, you can use doc.transact(()=>{/*actions are here. */});

3

If you have the Yjs document already loaded to memory, then it is always best to apply updates directly to a Yjs document (ideally all updates during a single transaction):

ydoc.transact(() => {
  updates.forEach(update => 
    Y.applyUpdate(ydoc, update)
  )
})

If you only have partial updates (e.g. x latest messages cached) and you don’t want to load the Yjs document, then you should use Y.mergeUpdates.

Note that Y.mergeUpdates doesn’t perform garbage-collection. Hence it is always recommended to load the document to a Yjs document from time to time to perform garbage-collection.

2 Likes
4

Thank you, @jarone @dmonad.