Benchmark: Clone Vs Create element

HTML Preparation code:

<div id="home"></div>

Tests:

createElement
var list = [], n = 0; while(true) { n++; var r = document.createElement('div'); var s1 = document.createElement('div'); var s2 = document.createElement('div'); s1.classList.add('one', 'two', 'three'); s2.classList.add('one', 'two', 'three'); r.appendChild(s1); r.appendChild(s2); list.push(r); if(n===100000) break; }
cloneNode
var list = [], n = 0; var r = document.createElement('div'); var s1 = document.createElement('div'); var s2 = document.createElement('div'); s1.classList.add('one', 'two', 'three'); s2.classList.add('one', 'two', 'three'); r.appendChild(s1); r.appendChild(s2); while(true) { n++; var rprime = r.cloneNode(true); list.push(rprime); if(n===100000) break; }

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
createElement
cloneNode

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 2 years ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/121.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 121 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
createElement	2.4 Ops/sec
cloneNode	19.1 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 provided benchmark definition and test cases to understand what's being tested.

**Benchmark Definition:**

The benchmark tests two approaches for creating and managing small element trees in HTML:

1. **createElement**: This approach creates an entire element tree from scratch repeatedly. In each iteration, a new top-level element (`div`) is created, and then two child elements (`div`) are created and added to the parent element. This process is repeated 100,000 times.
2. **cloneNode**: This approach creates an initial element tree only once and then clones it repeatedly. The initial tree consists of a single top-level element (`div`), which has two child elements (`div`). The cloned element is created by calling `cloneNode(true)` on the original top-level element, effectively copying the entire subtree.

**Options Compared:**

The benchmark compares the performance of these two approaches:

* **createElement**: Creates an entire element tree from scratch repeatedly.
* **cloneNode**: Creates an initial element tree once and clones it repeatedly.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach:**

1. **createElement**:
	* Pros:
		+ Only requires creating a single top-level element.
		+ May be faster for small trees due to reduced overhead.
	* Cons:
		+ Requires creating an entire tree from scratch each time, which can be expensive.
		+ May lead to memory fragmentation if the tree is large.
2. **cloneNode**:
	* Pros:
		+ Reduces the number of top-level elements created, potentially reducing overhead.
		+ Can be faster for large trees by avoiding the need to create a new element from scratch each time.
	* Cons:
		+ Requires creating an initial tree that needs to be cloned repeatedly.
		+ May lead to increased memory usage if the tree is very large.

**Library and Its Purpose:**

The `cloneNode()` method is a built-in JavaScript API used to create a copy of an element or its children. It's commonly used for various purposes, such as creating duplicate elements, preserving layout, and reducing the number of DOM nodes created in a document.

**Special JS Features or Syntax:**

None mentioned in the provided benchmark definition.

**Other Alternatives:**

Other approaches to managing small element trees could include:

* **use a different library or framework**: Depending on the specific requirements, alternative libraries or frameworks might offer more efficient or optimized ways of creating and managing DOM elements.
* **Optimize CSS layout**: By using CSS techniques like flexbox, grid, or position absolute, it's possible to reduce the number of HTML elements needed for complex layouts.
* **Use a custom solution**: Depending on the specific requirements, developers might create their own custom solution using JavaScript and/or CSS to optimize element tree creation and management.

Keep in mind that these alternatives are not explicitly mentioned in the provided benchmark definition and would require additional research or experimentation to determine their effectiveness.

Related benchmarks:

Clone Vs Create element (version: 0)

Test speed difference between creating a small element tree repeatedly vs creating it once and cloning it.

Comparing performance of: createElement vs cloneNode

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

createElement

cloneNode

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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