Benchmark: jQuery parents() vs closest()

HTML Preparation code:

<div class="root">
    <div class="parent parent-1">
        <div class="parent parent-2">
            <div class="parent parent-3">
                <div class="child">
                    Child
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
<script src='https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.js'></script>

Script Preparation code:

$('.child').parents('.root').eq(0);

Tests:

.parents(:selector).first();
$('.child').parents('.parent').first();
.closest(:selector);
$('.child').closest('.parent').first();

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
.parents(:selector).first();
.closest(:selector);

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 7 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 135 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
.parents(:selector).first();	257764.4 Ops/sec
.closest(:selector);	272320.8 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 6 months ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

I'll break down the provided JSON data and explain what's being tested, compared, and other considerations.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark is testing two different approaches to traverse an element in jQuery: `.parents()` and `.closest()`. The test case uses a predefined HTML structure with multiple elements nested inside each other. The goal is to find the first parent element that matches the specified selector.

**Options Compared**

Two options are compared:

1. `.parents(':selector').first();`
2. `.closest(':selector');`

These two methods differ in how they traverse the DOM tree:

* `.parents()` traverses up the DOM tree, starting from the immediate parent of the current element.
* `.closest()` also traverses up the DOM tree but uses a more aggressive approach by following all possible ancestors until it finds one that matches the selector.

**Pros and Cons**

* `.parents()`: Pros:
	+ More precise control over the traversal process.
	+ Can be slower due to the need for explicit traversal.
Cons:
	+ May not work as expected if the DOM tree is complex or has a large number of ancestors.
* `.closest()`: Pros:
	+ Faster execution speed, as it uses a more optimized algorithm.
	+ Easier to use, as it provides a simpler interface for traversing up the DOM tree.
Cons:
	+ Less precise control over the traversal process, which may lead to unexpected results.

**Library and Its Purpose**

The `jQuery` library is being used in this benchmark. jQuery is a popular JavaScript framework that simplifies DOM manipulation and event handling.

In this specific benchmark, the `$.parents()` and `$closest()` methods are used to traverse the DOM tree. The `.parents()` method returns an array of parent elements, while the `.closest()` method returns the first closest ancestor element that matches the specified selector.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

There is no special JavaScript feature or syntax being tested in this benchmark. It's a simple comparison between two jQuery methods for traversing the DOM tree.

**Other Alternatives**

If you're looking for alternative approaches to traverse the DOM tree, consider the following options:

1. `.parentNode`: This method can be used directly on an element to access its parent node.
2. `Element.getElementsByTagName()`: This method allows you to retrieve all elements with a specific tag name.
3. `Document.querySelectorAll(':selector')`: This method uses CSS selectors to select elements in the DOM tree.

Note that these alternatives may have different performance characteristics and use cases compared to `.parents()` and `.closest()`.

Related benchmarks:

jQuery parents() vs closest() (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: .parents(:selector).first(); vs .closest(:selector);

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

.parents(:selector).first();

.closest(:selector);

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 6 months ago):