Benchmark: using getAttribute vs property to access an element's id

HTML Preparation code:

hi
<a id="yes" href="/okay">go here!!!! jkkjkkjjj don't</a>

Tests:

getAttribute
const element = document.getElementById('yes'); let i = 1000; while (i--) { // here let attr = element.getAttribute('id'); console.log(attr); }
property
const element = document.getElementById('yes'); let i = 1000; while (i--) { // here 2 let attr = element.id; console.log(attr); }

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 5 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 5 runs

getAttribute

284/s

property

281/s

View exact numbers

✓ getAttribute: 284 ops/sec
• property: 281 ops/sec

Results show median performance across all community submissions. Run this benchmark yourself to verify on your device.

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
getAttribute
property

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one year ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

property

440/s

getAttribute

432/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ property	440 Ops/sec
getAttribute	432 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the benchmark and its options.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark is designed to measure the performance difference between using the `getAttribute` method and accessing an element's property (in this case, the `id` attribute) in JavaScript. The benchmark creates an HTML page with a single link element that has an `id` attribute set to "yes". The script then enters a loop where it accesses the `id` attribute of the link element using both methods.

**Options Compared**

The two options being compared are:

1. **`getAttribute` method**: This method returns the value of a named attribute for an element. In this case, it's used to access the `id` attribute.
2. **Accessing as a property**: The script accesses the `id` attribute directly as a property of the link element object.

**Pros and Cons**

*   **`getAttribute` method**:
    *   Pros: More explicit way to access attributes, which can be useful for reading or modifying attribute values.
    *   Cons: May incur additional overhead due to the method call, which can impact performance in high-speed loops like this one.
*   **Accessing as a property**: This approach is more concise and may be faster since it bypasses the function call overhead associated with `getAttribute`.

**Library Considerations**

There isn't an explicit library mentioned in the benchmark definition or test cases. However, the `document.getElementById` method returns an element object that can be accessed as a property (as shown in the "property" test case).

**Special JavaScript Features or Syntax**

None of the provided code snippets use any special JavaScript features or syntax.

**Other Alternatives**

If you wanted to include another option, some alternatives could be:

*   Using `getAttribute` with a prefix: Instead of using just `'id'`, you could pass the attribute name as a string with a prefix (`element.getAttribute('attr-yes')`). This might affect performance since it adds an extra step.
*   Using `dataset`: If you're targeting modern browsers, you can use the `dataset` property to access attribute values. For example: `element.dataset.id`. This approach is concise but may not be supported in older browsers.

By exploring these alternatives, you could create a more comprehensive benchmark that tests different approaches to accessing element attributes in JavaScript.

using getAttribute vs property to access an element's id (version: 0)

ok

Comparing performance of: `getAttribute vs property`

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

getAttribute

property

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 5 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 5 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

using getAttribute vs property to access an element's id (version: 0)

ok

Comparing performance of: getAttribute vs property

Created: 4 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

getAttribute

property

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 5 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 5 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

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Comparing performance of: `getAttribute vs property`