Benchmark: traverse vs NodeIterator vs TreeWalker vs document.querySelectorAll(*) (fix: querySelectorAll)

traverse vs NodeIterator vs TreeWalker vs document.querySelectorAll(*) (fix: querySelectorAll) (version: 0)

Let's compare the speed of 4 different ways to traverse the DOM.

Comparing performance of: Traverse function vs NodeIterator with filter function vs NodeIterator with filter param vs TreeWalker with filter function vs TreeWalker with filter param vs querySelectorAll('*')

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Script Preparation code:

// language=HTML
const html = `
    <!-- article out start -->
    <article>
        <!-- article in start -->
        <h1>Lorem ipsum</h1>
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Cumque, nostrum.</p>
        <!-- article in end -->
    </article>
    <!-- article out end -->

    <!-- article out start -->
    <article>
        <!-- article in start -->
        <h1>Lorem ipsum</h1>
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Cumque, nostrum.</p>
        <!-- article in end -->
    </article>
    <!-- article out end -->

    <!-- article out start -->
    <article>
        <!-- article in start -->
        <h1>Lorem ipsum</h1>
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Cumque, nostrum.</p>
        <!-- article in end -->
    </article>
    <!-- article out end -->
`;
const template = document.createElement('template');
template.innerHTML = html;

window.testTemplate = template;

window.testTraverse = function traverse(node, use) {
    if (!node) return;

    use(node);
    traverse(node.firstChild, use);
    traverse(node.nextSibling, use);
}

Tests:

Traverse function
const comments = []; testTraverse(testTemplate.content.firstChild, node => { if (node.nodeType === NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL) { comments.push(node); } });
NodeIterator with filter function
const nodeIterator = document.createNodeIterator( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL, { acceptNode(node) { if (node.nodeType === NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL) { return NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT; } return NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT; } } ); const comments = []; while (nodeIterator.nextNode()) { comments.push(nodeIterator.currentNode); }
NodeIterator with filter param
const nodeIterator = document.createNodeIterator( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL ); const comments = []; while (nodeIterator.nextNode()) { comments.push(nodeIterator.currentNode); }
TreeWalker with filter function
const treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL, { acceptNode(node) { if (node.nodeType === Node.COMMENT_NODE) { return NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT; } return NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT; } } ); const comments = []; while (treeWalker.nextNode()) { comments.push(treeWalker.currentNode); }
TreeWalker with filter param
const treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_COMMENT ); const comments = []; while (treeWalker.nextNode()) { comments.push(treeWalker.currentNode); }
querySelectorAll('*')
Array.from(testTemplate.querySelectorAll('*'))

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Traverse function
NodeIterator with filter function
NodeIterator with filter param
TreeWalker with filter function
TreeWalker with filter param
querySelectorAll('*')

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 6 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/137.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 137 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Traverse function	220271.3 Ops/sec
NodeIterator with filter function	34117.1 Ops/sec
NodeIterator with filter param	406884.6 Ops/sec
TreeWalker with filter function	95923.5 Ops/sec
TreeWalker with filter param	856715.2 Ops/sec
querySelectorAll('*')	1461422.6 Ops/sec