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This specification defines an interface for web applications to access the complete timing information for resources in a document.
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This document was published by the Web Performance Working Group as a Working Draft.
This document is intended to become a W3C Recommendation.
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This section is non-normative.
User latency is an important quality benchmark for Web Applications. While
JavaScript-based mechanisms can provide comprehensive instrumentation for
user latency measurements within an application, in many cases, they are
unable to provide a complete end-to-end latency picture. This document introduces the PerformanceResourceTiming
interface to allow JavaScript mechanisms to collect complete timing
information related to resources on a document. Navigation Timing 2 [NAVIGATION-TIMING-2] extends this specification to provide additional timing information associated with a navigation.
For example, the following JavaScript shows a simple attempt to measure the time it takes to fetch a resource:
<!doctype html> <html> <head> </head> <body onload="loadResources()"> <script> function loadResources() { var start = new Date().getTime(); var image1 = new Image(); var resourceTiming = function() { var now = new Date().getTime(); var latency = now - start; alert("End to end resource fetch: " + latency); }; image1.onload = resourceTiming; image1.src = 'https://www.w3.org/Icons/w3c_main.png'; } </script> <img src="https://www.w3.org/Icons/w3c_home.png"> </body> </html>
Though this script can measure the time it takes to fetch a resource, it cannot break down the time spent in various phases. Further, the script cannot easily measure the time it takes to fetch resources described in markup.
To address the need for complete information on user experience, this document
introduces the PerformanceResourceTiming interface.
This interface allows JavaScript mechanisms to provide complete client-side latency measurements within applications.
With this interface, the previous example can be modified to measure a user's
perceived load time of a resource.
The following script calculates the amount of time it takes to fetch every resource in the
page, even those defined in markup. This example assumes
that this page is hosted on https://www.w3.org.
One could further measure the amount of time it takes in every phase of fetching a resource
with the PerformanceResourceTiming interface.
<!doctype html> <html> <head> </head> <body onload="loadResources()"> <script> function loadResources() { var image1 = new Image(); image1.onload = resourceTiming; image1.src = 'https://www.w3.org/Icons/w3c_main.png'; } function resourceTiming() { var resourceList = window.performance.getEntriesByType("resource"); for (i = 0; i < resourceList.length; i++) { if (resourceList[i].initiatorType == "img") { alert("End to end resource fetch: "+ resourceList[i].responseEnd - resourceList[i].startTime); } } } </script> <img id="image0" src="https://www.w3.org/Icons/w3c_home.png"> </body> </html>
As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring guidelines, diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.
The key words MAY, MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, and SHOULD NOT are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
Requirements phrased in the imperative as part of algorithms (such as "strip any leading space characters" or "return false and abort these steps") are to be interpreted with the meaning of the key word ("MUST", "SHOULD", "MAY", etc) used in introducing the algorithm.
Some conformance requirements are phrased as requirements on attributes, methods or objects. Such requirements are to be interpreted as requirements on user agents.
Conformance requirements phrased as algorithms or specific steps may be implemented in any manner, so long as the end result is equivalent. (In particular, the algorithms defined in this specification are intended to be easy to follow, and not intended to be performant.)
The IDL fragments in this specification must be interpreted as required for conforming IDL fragments, as described in the Web IDL specification. [WebIDL]
The construction "a Foo object", where Foo is actually an interface, is sometimes used instead of
the more accurate "an object implementing the interface Foo".
The term DOM is used to refer to the API set made available to scripts in
Web applications, and does not necessarily imply the existence of an actual
Document object or of any other Node objects as
defined in the DOM specification. [DOM]
A DOM attribute is said to be getting when its value is being retrieved (such as by author script), and is said to be setting when a new value is assigned to it.
The term JavaScript is used to refer to ECMA262, rather than the official term ECMAScript, since the term JavaScript is more widely known. [ECMA-262]
The term resource is used to refer to elements and any other user-initiated fetches throughout this specification. For example, a resource could originate from XMLHttpRequest objects [[XMLHttpRequest], HTML elements [HTML5] such as iframe, img, script, object, embed, and link with the link type of stylesheet, and SVG elements [SVG11] such as svg.
The term cross-origin is used to mean non same origin.
The term current document refers to the document associated with the Window object's newest Document object.
Throughout this work, all time values are measured in milliseconds since the start of navigation of the document [HR-TIME-2]. For example, the start of navigation of the document occurs at time 0.
The term current time refers to the number of milliseconds since the start of navigation of the document until the current moment in time.
This definition of time is based on the High Resolution Time specification [HR-TIME-2] and is different from the definition of time used in the Navigation Timing specification [NAVIGATION-TIMING], where time is measured in milliseconds since midnight of January 1, 1970 (UTC).
This section is non-normative.
The PerformanceResourceTiming
interface facilitates timing measurement of downloadable resources. For example, this interface is available for
XMLHttpRequest objects [XMLHttpRequest], HTML
elements [HTML5] such as
iframe,
img,
script,
object,
embed,
and link
with the link type of
stylesheet,
and SVG elements [SVG11] such
as svg.
PerformanceResourceTiming InterfaceAll resources fetched by the current browsing [HTML5] or worker [WORKERS] context's MUST be included as PerformanceResourceTiming objects in the Performance Timeline of the relevant context. Resources that are retrieved from relevant application caches or local resources MUST be included as PerformanceResourceTiming objects in the Performance Timeline [PERFORMANCE-TIMELINE-2]. Resources for which the fetch was initiated, but was later aborted (e.g. due to a network error) MUST be included as PerformanceResourceTiming objects in the Performance Timeline and MUST contain initialized attribute values for processed substeps of the processing model.
The rest of this section is non-normative.
Examples:
src attribute of two HTML IMG elements,
the fetch of the resource initiated by the first HTML IMG element SHOULD
be included as a PerformanceResourceTiming object in the Performance Timeline.
The user agent might not re-request the URL for the second HTML IMG element, instead using the existing download it initiated for the first HTML IMG element.
In this case, the fetch of the resource by the first
IMG element would be the only occurrence in the Performance Timeline.
src attribute of a HTML IMG element is changed via script, both the fetch of the original resource as well
as the fetch of the new URL would be included as PerformanceResourceTiming objects in
the Performance Timeline.
IFRAME element is added via markup without specifying a src attribute, the user agent may load the about:blank document for the IFRAME. If at a later time the src attribute is changed dynamically via script, the user agent may
fetch the new URL resource for the IFRAME. In this case, only the
fetch of the new URL would be included
as a PerformanceResourceTiming object in the Performance Timeline.
XMLHttpRequest is generated twice for the same canonical URL, both fetches of the resource would be
included as a PerformanceResourceTiming object in the Performance Timeline.
This is because the fetch of the resource for the second XMLHttpRequest cannot reuse the download issued for the first XMLHttpRequest.
IFRAME element is included on the page, then only the resource requested by IFRAME src attribute is included
as a PerformanceResourceTiming object in the Performance Timeline.
Sub-resources requested by the IFRAME document will be included in the IFRAME document's Performance Timeline and not the parent
document's Performance Timeline.
IMG element has a data: URI as its source [RFC2397], then this resource will not
be included as a PerformanceResourceTiming object in the Performance Timeline.
By definition data: URI contains embedded data and does not require a fetch.
PerformanceResourceTiming object in the Performance Timeline with initialized attribute values up to the point of failure - e.g. a TCP handshake error should report DNS timestamps for the request, and so on.
PerformanceResourceTiming object in the Performance Timeline.
PerformanceResourceTiming Interface
The PerformanceResourceTiming interface participates in the
Performance Timeline and extends the following attributes of the
PerformanceEntry interface:
nameentryTypeentryType attribute MUST return the DOMString "resource".startTimestartTime attribute MUST return a DOMHighResTimeStamp [HR-TIME-2]
with the time immediately before the user agent starts to queue the resource for fetching.
If there are HTTP redirects or equivalent
when fetching the resource, and if all the redirects or equivalent are from the same origin as the current
document or the timing allow check algorithm passes, this attribute MUST return the same value as redirectStart.
Otherwise, this attribute MUST return the same value as fetchStart.durationduration attribute MUST return a DOMHighResTimeStamp
equal to the difference between responseEnd and startTime, respectively.[Exposed=(Window,Worker)]
interface PerformanceResourceTiming : PerformanceEntry {
readonly attribute DOMString initiatorType;
readonly attribute DOMString nextHopProtocol;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp workerStart;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp redirectStart;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp redirectEnd;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp fetchStart;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp domainLookupStart;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp domainLookupEnd;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp connectStart;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp connectEnd;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp secureConnectionStart;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp requestStart;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp responseStart;
readonly attribute DOMHighResTimeStamp responseEnd;
readonly attribute unsigned long long transferSize;
readonly attribute unsigned long long encodedBodySize;
readonly attribute unsigned long long decodedBodySize;
serializer = {inherit, attribute};
};
On getting, the initiatorType attribute MUST return one of the following DOMString:
localName of that
element [DOM], if the initiator is an element."css", if the initiator is a CSS resource downloaded by the url() syntax [CSS-SYNTAX-3], such as @import url() or background: url()."xmlhttprequest", if the initiator is an XMLHttpRequest object [XMLHttpRequest].On getting, the attribute nextHopProtocol returns the network protocol used to fetch the resource, as identified by the ALPN Protocol ID [RFC7301]. When a proxy is configured, if a tunnel connection is established then this attribute MUST return the ALPN Protocol ID of the tunneled protocol, otherwise it MUST return the ALPN Protocol ID of the first hop to the proxy. In order to have precisely one way to represent any ALPN protocol ID, the following additional constraints apply: octets in the ALPN protocol MUST NOT be percent-encoded if they are valid token characters except "%", and when using percent-encoding, uppercase hex digits MUST be used.
Note that the nextHopProtocol attribute is intended to identify the network protocol in use for the fetch regardless of how it was actually negotiated; that is, even if ALPN is not used to negotiate the network protocol, this attribute still uses the ALPN Protocol ID's to indicate the protocol in use.
On getting, the workerStart attribute MUST return as follows:
If the current browsing or worker context's have an active worker [SERVICE-WORKERS]:
On getting, the redirectStart attribute MUST return as follows:
On getting, the redirectEnd attribute MUST return as follows:
On getting, the fetchStart attribute MUST return as follows:
On getting, the domainLookupStart attribute MUST return as follows:
fetchStart, if a persistent
connection [RFC7230] is used or the resource
is retrieved from relevant
application caches or local resources.
On getting, the domainLookupEnd attribute MUST return as follows:
fetchStart, if a persistent
connection [RFC7230] is used or the resource
is retrieved from relevant
application caches or local resources.
On getting, the connectStart attribute MUST return as follows:
fetchStart, if a persistent
connection [RFC7230] is used or the resource is retrieved from relevant application caches or local resources.If the transport connection fails and the user agent reopens a connection,
connectStart SHOULD return the corresponding value of the new connection.
On getting, the connectEnd attribute MUST return as follows:
fetchStart, if a persistent connection [RFC7230] is used or the resource is retrieved from relevant application caches or local resources.The returned time MUST include the time interval to establish the transport connection, as well as other time intervals such as SSL handshake and SOCKS authentication.
If the transport connection fails and the user agent reopens a connection, connectEnd SHOULD return the corresponding value of the new connection.
On getting, the secureConnectionStart attribute MUST return as follows:
fetchStart, if a persistent connection [RFC7230] is used or the resource is retrieved from relevant application caches or local resources.
On getting, the requestStart attribute MUST return as follows:
If the transport connection fails after a request is sent and the user
agent reopens a connection and resend the request, requestStart MUST return the corresponding values of the new request.
On getting, the responseStart attribute MUST return as follows:
On getting, the responseEnd attribute MUST return as follows:
On getting, the transferSize attribute MUST return as follows:
If there are HTTP redirects or equivalent when navigating and if all the redirects or equivalent are from the same origin [RFC6454], this attribute SHOULD include the HTTP overhead of incurred redirects.
This attribute SHOULD include HTTP overhead (such as HTTP/1.1 chunked encoding and whitespace around header fields, including newlines, and HTTP/2 frame overhead, along with other server-to-client frames on the same stream), but SHOULD NOT include lower-layer protocol overhead (such as TLS [RFC5246]or TCP).
On getting, the encodedBodySize attribute MUST return as follows:
On getting, the decodedBodySize attribute MUST return as follows:
Performance Interface
The user agent MAY choose to limit how many resources are included as
PerformanceResourceTiming objects in the Performance Timeline [PERFORMANCE-TIMELINE-2]. This section extends the Performance interface to allow controls over the number of PerformanceResourceTiming objects stored.
The recommended minimum number of PerformanceResourceTiming objects is 150, though this may be changed by the user agent.
setResourceTimingBufferSize
can be called to request a change to this limit.
Each ECMAScript global environment has:
partial interface Performance {
void clearResourceTimings();
void setResourceTimingBufferSize(unsigned long maxSize);
attribute EventHandler onresourcetimingbufferfull;
};
The method clearResourceTimings runs the following steps:
PerformanceResourceTiming objects in the performance entry buffer.
The setResourceTimingBufferSize method runs the following steps:
PerformanceResourceTiming objects are to be removed from the performance entry buffer.
The attribute onresourcetimingbufferfull is the event handler for the resourcetimingbufferfull event.
To add a PerformanceResourceTiming entry (new entry) in the performance entry buffer, run the following steps:
resourcetimingbufferfull at the Document, with its bubbles attribute initialized to true, and has no default action.
Cross-origin resources MUST be included as PerformanceResourceTiming objects in the Performance Timeline.
If the timing allow check algorithm fails for a cross-origin resource, these attributes of its PerformanceResourceTiming object
MUST be set to zero: redirectStart, redirectEnd,
domainLookupStart, domainLookupEnd, connectStart,
connectEnd, requestStart, responseStart,
secureConnectionStart, transferSize, encodedBodySize and decodedBodySize.
Server-side applications may return the Timing-Allow-Origin HTTP response header
to allow the User Agent to fully expose, to the document origin(s) specified, the
values of attributes that would have been zero due to the cross-origin
restrictions previously specified in this section.
Timing-Allow-Origin Response HeaderThe Timing-Allow-Origin header indicates whether a resource's timing can be
shared based by returning the value of the Origin request header in the
response.
ABNF:
Timing-Allow-Origin = "Timing-Allow-Origin" ":" origin-list-or-null | "*"
The timing allow check algorithm, which checks whether a resource's timing information can be shared with the current document, is as follows:
If the resource is not cross-origin, return pass.
If the HTTP response includes zero or more than one
Timing-Allow-Origin
header values, return fail and terminate this algorithm.
If the
Timing-Allow-Origin
header value is the "*" character, return pass and terminate this
algorithm.
If the value of
Timing-Allow-Origin
is not a case-sensitive match for the value of the
origin of the current document, return fail and terminate this algorithm.
Return pass.
The above algorithm also functions when the
ASCII serialization of an origin is
the string "null". Typically, this is the case when there are multiple redirects and the initiator is an XMLHttpRequest object.
In practice the
origin-list-or-null production is
more constrained. Rather than allowing a space-separated list of
origins, it is either a
single origin or the string
"null".
The following graph illustrates the timing attributes defined by the PerformanceResourceTiming interface. Attributes underlined may not be available when fetching resources from different origins. User agents may perform internal processing in between timings, which allow for non-normative intervals between timings.

For each resource fetched by the current browsing context, excluding resources fetched by cross-origin stylesheets fetched with no-cors policy, perform the following steps:
Above cross-origin exclusion should be defined via Fetch registry: CSS needs to be defined in terms of Fetch and set some kind of "opaque request flag" for no-CORS CSS subresources. In turn, Resource Timing should interface with Fetch registry to surface resource fetch events.
PerformanceResourceTiming object and
set entryType to the DOMString resource.
nextHopProtocol to the empty DOMString.
initiatorType.
workerStart, or if the worker is already available, immediately before the event named `fetch` is fired at the active worker record the time as workerStart. Otherwise, if there is no matching service worker registration, set workerStart value to zero.fetchStart. Let domainLookupStart, domainLookupEnd, connectStart and connectEnd be the same value as fetchStart.redirectStart,
redirectEnd,
domainLookupStart,
domainLookupEnd,
connectStart,
connectEnd,
requestStart,
responseStart and
secureConnectionStart
to zero and go to step 17.
domainLookupStart,
domainLookupEnd,
connectStart and
connectEnd be the same value as
fetchStart.domainLookupStart.domainLookupEnd immediately after the
domain name lookup is successfully done. A user agent may need multiple retries before that. If
the domain lookup fails, abort the remaining steps. connectStart and connectEnd
be the same value of domainLookupEnd. Otherwise, record the time as
connectStart immediately before initiating the connection to the server and record the time as connectEnd immediately after the connection to the server or the proxy is established. A user agent may need multiple retries before this time. Once connection is established set the value of nextHopProtocol to the ALPN ID used by the connection. If a connection can not be established, abort the remaining steps.
secureConnectionStart attribute as follows:
secureConnectionStart
immediately before the handshake process to secure the connection.
secureConnectionStart to 0.
requestStart.
responseStart immediately after the user agent receives the first byte of the response.
responseEnd
immediately after receiving the last byte of the response.
transferSize, encodedBodySize, decodedBodySize to corresponding values, subject to timing allow check algorithm.responseEnd and startTime in duration.
redirectStart and redirectEnd to 0. Then, return to step 5 with the new resource.
PerformanceResourceTiming object to 0 except
startTime,
redirectStart,
redirectEnd, and initiatorType.
PerformanceResourceTiming object.
PerformanceResourceTiming object.
The value of the timing attributes MUST monotonically increase to ensure timing attributes are not skewed by adjustments to the system clock while fetching the resource. The difference between any two chronologically recorded timing attributes MUST never be negative. For all resources, including subdocument resources, the user agent MUST record the system clock at the beginning of the root document navigation and define subsequent timing attributes in terms of a monotonic clock measuring time elapsed from the beginning of the navigation.
This section is non-normative.
The PerformanceResourceTiming interface exposes timing information for a resource to any web page or worker that has requested that resource. To limit the access to the PerformanceResourceTiming interface, the same origin
policy is enforced by default and certain attributes are set to zero, as described in 4.5 Cross-origin Resources. Resource providers can
explicitly allow all timing information to be collected for a resource by
adding the Timing-Allow-Origin HTTP response header, which specifies the
domains that are allowed to access the timing information.
Statistical fingerprinting is a privacy concern where a malicious web site may determine whether a user has visited a third-party web site by measuring the timing of cache hits and misses of resources in the third-party web site. Though the PerformanceResourceTiming interface gives timing information for resources in a document, the cross-origin restrictions prevent making this privacy concern any worse than it is today using the load event on resources to measure timing to determine cache hits and misses.
We would like to sincerely thank Karen Anderson, Darin Fisher, Tony Gentilcore, Nic Jansma, Kyle Scholz, Jonas Sicking, James Simonsen, Steve Souders, Annie Sullivan, Sigbjørn Vik, Jason Weber to acknowledge their contributions to this work.