Benchmark: Testing getElementById vs getElementsByClassName vs querySelector vs querySelectorAll

HTML Preparation code:

<div class="test" id="testing"></div>

Tests:

getElementById
document.getElementById("testing")
getElementsByClassName
document.getElementsByClassName("test")
querySelector
document.querySelector(".test")
querySelectorAll
document.querySelectorAll(".test")

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
getElementById
getElementsByClassName
querySelector
querySelectorAll

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 3 years ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 14_8 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/93.0.4577.39 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Browser/OS: Chrome Mobile iOS 93 on iOS 14.8

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
getElementById	6243466.0 Ops/sec
getElementsByClassName	6032148.5 Ops/sec
querySelector	4718492.5 Ops/sec
querySelectorAll	2970452.5 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided benchmark and explain what's being tested, the different approaches compared, their pros and cons, and other considerations.

**What's being tested:**

The benchmark is testing four different methods to select HTML elements:

1. `document.getElementById("testing")` (getElementById)
2. `document.getElementsByClassName("test")` (getElementsByClassName)
3. `document.querySelector(".test")` (querySelector)
4. `document.querySelectorAll(".test")` (querySelectorAll)

**Approaches compared:**

The four approaches are being compared to measure their performance and efficiency.

**Pros and Cons of each approach:**

1. **getElementById**: This method is simple and efficient, as it only returns the first matching element. However, if no element matches the ID, it returns null.
2. **getElementsByClassName**: This method returns a NodeList containing all elements that have the specified class. It's useful when you need to select multiple elements with the same class. However, it can be slower than getElementById for single-element selections and may cause performance issues if the DOM is large.
3. **querySelector**: This method allows selecting elements using CSS selectors, which provides more flexibility but can also introduce complexity and overhead.
4. **querySelectorAll**: Similar to querySelector, this method returns a NodeList containing all matching elements. However, it's more flexible than getElementsByClassName as it allows using CSS selectors.

**Other considerations:**

* The benchmark is running on mobile devices (Chrome Mobile iOS 93), which may have different performance characteristics compared to desktop browsers.
* The test is only selecting elements with the ID "testing" or class "test", which might not be representative of real-world scenarios where multiple elements are selected based on different criteria.

**Library and syntax:**

The benchmark doesn't use any external libraries, but it does utilize JavaScript's built-in DOM methods and CSS selectors.

**Special JS feature or syntax:**

None mentioned in this explanation. However, if the benchmark used a newer JavaScript feature like async/await or Promises, it would be worth noting.

**Alternatives:**

If you're interested in alternatives to this benchmark or want to explore other methods for selecting elements, consider:

1. **CSS Selectors:** Using CSS selectors with libraries like jQuery or vanilla JavaScript can provide similar functionality but may introduce additional overhead.
2. **DOM Traversal:** Instead of using getElementById or querySelector, you could use DOM traversal methods like querySelectorAll or getElementsByTagName to navigate the DOM and find elements based on their position.
3. **Template Literals:** Using template literals (e.g., `document.querySelector(`${elementClass}`)` ) can provide a more flexible way to construct CSS selectors.

Keep in mind that each approach has its strengths and weaknesses, and the best method for your use case will depend on the specific requirements and performance characteristics of your application.

Related benchmarks:

Testing getElementById vs getElementsByClassName vs querySelector vs querySelectorAll (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: getElementById vs getElementsByClassName vs querySelector vs querySelectorAll

Created: 3 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

getElementById

getElementsByClassName

querySelector

querySelectorAll

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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