Benchmark: parentNode vs firstChild vs nextSibling vs previousSibling (plus bonus: firstChild.nextSibling, querySelectorAlls)

HTML Preparation code:

<html>

<body>
    <div id='test'><div class='child' data-t></div><div></div><div></div></div>
</body>

</html>

Script Preparation code:

var parent = document.getElementById('test');
var child1 = parent.children[0]
var child2 = parent.children[1]

Tests:

parentNode
let n = child1.parentNode;
firstChild
let n = parent.firstChild;
nextSibling
let n = child1.nextSibling
previousSibling
let n = child2.previousSibling
firstChild.nextSibling
let n = parent.firstChild.nextSibling
querySelectorAll class
let n = parent.querySelectorAll(".child")[0]
querySelectorAll data attributed
let n = parent.querySelectorAll("[data-t]")[0]

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
parentNode
firstChild
nextSibling
previousSibling
firstChild.nextSibling
querySelectorAll class
querySelectorAll data attributed

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 128 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
parentNode	1608060.8 Ops/sec
firstChild	1751765.1 Ops/sec
nextSibling	1813089.8 Ops/sec
previousSibling	1827631.5 Ops/sec
firstChild.nextSibling	1439607.4 Ops/sec
querySelectorAll class	427310.4 Ops/sec
querySelectorAll data attributed	354409.2 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 JSON benchmark.

**Benchmark Purpose:**
The goal of this benchmark is to measure which method is the fastest for finding nodes in a DOM tree. Specifically, it tests six approaches:

1. `parentNode`
2. `firstChild`
3. `nextSibling`
4. `previousSibling`
5. `firstChild.nextSibling`
6. `querySelectorAll` with two different selectors: `.child` and `[data-t]`

**Comparison of Options:**

* **`parentNode`**: This approach traverses up the DOM tree from the child node to the parent node, which can lead to slower performance due to deeper traversal.
* **`firstChild`**: This approach starts by finding the first sibling node (not necessarily a child in the traditional sense) and then accesses its `previousSibling`. It can be faster than `parentNode`, but still traverses up the tree.
* **`nextSibling`** and **`previousSibling`**: These approaches find the next or previous sibling nodes, respectively, without traversing up the tree. They are likely to be the fastest options.
* **`firstChild.nextSibling`**: This approach is similar to `nextSibling`, but starts with the `firstChild` node instead of its first sibling.
* **`querySelectorAll`** with `.child`: This approach uses a CSS selector to find nodes with the class `child`. QuerySelectorAll can be slower than direct property access because it involves parsing and executing CSS selectors.
* **`querySelectorAll`** with `[data-t]`: Similar to the previous option, but uses an attribute-based selector instead of a CSS class.

**Pros and Cons:**

* Direct properties (e.g., `parentNode`, `firstChild`, `nextSibling`) are likely to be faster because they only access the node's property without traversing up or down the tree.
* QuerySelectorAll with `.child` might be slower due to parsing and executing CSS selectors, but it can provide more flexible searching capabilities.
* QuerySelectorAll with `[data-t]` is similar in performance to the class-based selector, but provides an alternative way to find nodes based on attributes.

**Other Considerations:**

* The benchmark uses Chrome 128 as the browser, which might not be representative of all browsers or versions.
* The DOM tree used in the benchmark has a specific structure (two child elements with `data-t` attributes), which may not reflect real-world scenarios.

**Alternatives:**
If you're interested in exploring other methods for finding nodes in a DOM tree, consider:

* Using `querySelector` or `querySelectorAll` with XPath expressions.
* Implementing your own recursive function to traverse the tree.
* Using a library like jQuery that provides an alternative set of methods for navigating the DOM.

Keep in mind that each approach has its trade-offs, and the best method depends on your specific use case and performance requirements.

Related benchmarks:

parentNode vs firstChild vs nextSibling vs previousSibling (plus bonus: firstChild.nextSibling, querySelectorAlls) (version: 0)

Fastest way to find nodes

Comparing performance of: parentNode vs firstChild vs nextSibling vs previousSibling vs firstChild.nextSibling vs querySelectorAll class vs querySelectorAll data attributed

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

parentNode

firstChild

nextSibling

previousSibling

firstChild.nextSibling

querySelectorAll class

querySelectorAll data attributed

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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