Run results for: Traverse function vs NodeIterator vs TreeWalker (elements)

Run details:

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/141.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser: Chrome 141

Operating system: Windows

Device Platform: Desktop

Date tested: 6 months ago

Test name	Executions per second
Traverse function	3537509.5 Ops/sec
NodeIterator with filter function	15103.5 Ops/sec
NodeIterator with filter param	1527301.0 Ops/sec
TreeWalker with filter function	15530.0 Ops/sec
TreeWalker with filter param	1975882.4 Ops/sec

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;

Tests:

Traverse function
const elements = []; function traverse(node) { if (!node) return; if (node.nodeType === Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { elements.push(node); } traverse(node.nextElementSibling); traverse(node.firstElementChild); } traverse(testTemplate.content.firstElementChild); if (elements.length !== 9) throw new Error(`Expected 9 elements, got ${elements.length}`);
NodeIterator with filter function
const nodeIterator = document.createNodeIterator( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL, { acceptNode(node) { if (node.nodeType === Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { return NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT; } return NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT; } } ); const elements = []; while (nodeIterator.nextNode()) { elements.push(nodeIterator.currentNode); } if (elements.length !== 9) throw new Error(`Expected 9 elements, got ${elements.length}`);
NodeIterator with filter param
const nodeIterator = document.createNodeIterator( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT ); const elements = []; while (nodeIterator.nextNode()) { elements.push(nodeIterator.currentNode); } if (elements.length !== 9) throw new Error(`Expected 9 elements, got ${elements.length}`);
TreeWalker with filter function
const treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL, { acceptNode(node) { if (node.nodeType === Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { return NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT; } return NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT; } } ); const elements = []; while (treeWalker.nextNode()) { elements.push(treeWalker.currentNode); } if (elements.length !== 9) throw new Error(`Expected 9 elements, got ${elements.length}`);
TreeWalker with filter param
const treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT ); const elements = []; while (treeWalker.nextNode()) { elements.push(treeWalker.currentNode); } if (elements.length !== 9) throw new Error(`Expected 9 elements, got ${elements.length}`);

Run results for: Traverse function vs NodeIterator vs TreeWalker (elements)

Let's compare the speed of 3 different ways to traverse the DOM.

Traverse function

NodeIterator with filter function

NodeIterator with filter param

TreeWalker with filter function

TreeWalker with filter param