Paypal-checkout-components: Excessive checkout.js file size

[deejbee]

I nearly fell of my chair when I saw how big (1.2Mb) this checkout.js file is. Granted, Gzip compression helps a lot but it hasn't been minified either. That alone would have saved ~35%.

Forcing users to download that sort of size file over a 3g network in many countries where they have no other option isn't very smart and causes customer drop off.

By comparison, if I head over and have a quick look at stripe.js, their js download is 75Kb, downloads in 14ms, while this is 1.2Mb and downloads in 196ms (tested on 80mb/sec line)

[bluepnume]

Hi @deejbee.

There's a minified version at https://www.paypalobjects.com/api/checkout.min.js which clocks in at 98kb.

I definitely agree there's work to be done here. We have plans to:

• Lazy load anything which isn't required for the first render
• Create a version of the script which doesn't contain legacy integration methods
• Split out code which is only needed on the child window
• Conditionally load localization content based on detected locale

I should also point out, if I may -- I believe the equivalent script on Stripe's side, which handles the checkout UI, is https://checkout.stripe.com/checkout.js. By the time that has finished loading its 20 different dependencies, it totals out at 472kb:

[deejbee]

Looking forward to any improvements.

It would probably be a good idea to at least point the documentation to use the minified version at least?

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/express-checkout/integration-jsv4/upgrade-integration/

Also, regarding timings. Just downloading checkout.min.js is typically an order of magnitude slower (> 120ms) than https://checkout.stripe.com/checkout.js (~12ms). That could just be a CDN issue. The perceived load time of paypal is also orders of magnitude slower, with checkout.js showing a spinner in a popup window for around 3 seconds in production, before anything useful for payment is shown, while stripe shows the popup payment window almost instantaneously, without any need for a spinner.

I can appreciate that paypal will have a lot more baggage to carry and has a lot more features to deal with, but perceived speed is how customers rate their experience.

[bluepnume]

Closing this as there's an existing discussion here: https://github.com/paypal/paypal-checkout/issues/44

I'm going to try to find some priority for the things we discussed, in the next few weeks. Adding a link to the minified script in the docs is a good plan.

[gety9]

@bluepnume

Came here to post this.

+1 to adding it to docs/demos? Or at least mentioning it.

Why should devs waste time finding our that min version exists?

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