JavaScript WeakMap Weak reference demo
Example
JavaScript uses reference counting technique to detect unused objects. When reference count to an object is zero, that object will be released by the garbage collector. Weakmap uses weak reference that does not contribute to reference count of an object, therefore it is very useful to solve memory leak problems.
Here is a demo of weakmap. I use a very large object as value to show that weak reference does not contribute to reference count.
// manually trigger garbage collection to make sure that we are in good status.
> global.gc();
undefined
// check initial memory use，heapUsed is 4M or so
> process.memoryUsage();
{ rss: 21106688,
heapTotal: 7376896,
heapUsed: 4153936,
external: 9059 }
> let wm = new WeakMap();
undefined
> const b = new Object();
undefined
> global.gc();
undefined
// heapUsed is still 4M or so
> process.memoryUsage();
{ rss: 20537344,
heapTotal: 9474048,
heapUsed: 3967272,
external: 8993 }
// add key-value tuple into WeakMap，
// key is b，value is 5*1024*1024 array
> wm.set(b, new Array(5*1024*1024));
WeakMap {}
// manually garbage collection
> global.gc();
undefined
// heapUsed is still 45M
> process.memoryUsage();
{ rss: 62652416,
heapTotal: 51437568,
heapUsed: 45911664,
external: 8951 }
// b reference to null
> b = null;
null
// garbage collection
> global.gc();
undefined
// after remove b reference to object，heapUsed is 4M again
// it means the big array in WeakMap is released
// it also means weekmap does not contribute to big array's reference count, only b does.
> process.memoryUsage();
{ rss: 20639744,
heapTotal: 8425472,
heapUsed: 3979792,
external: 8956 }
