Benchmark: JS: insertBefore vs prepend

HTML Preparation code:

<div id="container"><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>

Script Preparation code:

var container = document.getElementById("container");
var paragraph = document.createElement("p");

Tests:

insertBefore
container.insertBefore(paragraph, container.firstChild);
prepend
container.prepend(paragraph);

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
insertBefore
prepend

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 11 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 120 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
insertBefore	3500018.8 Ops/sec
prepend	3271965.8 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided benchmark and explain what's being tested, compared, and some pros and cons of each approach.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark compares two methods for inserting an HTML element (`paragraph`) into a container DOM node: `insertBefore` and `prepend`. The test is designed to measure which method is faster on various systems.

**Script Preparation Code**

The script preparation code creates a reference to the container element with `document.getElementById("container")` and creates a paragraph element with `var paragraph = document.createElement("p");`.

**Html Preparation Code**

The html preparation code creates an HTML structure for the test, including multiple paragraphs inside a container div.

**Test Cases**

There are two individual test cases:

1. **insertBefore**: Inserts the `paragraph` element before the first child of the `container` element using `container.insertBefore(paragraph, container.firstChild)`.
2. **prepend**: Prepends the `paragraph` element to the `container` element using `container.prepend(paragraph)`.

**Comparison**

The benchmark compares the execution time of these two methods on different systems. To do this, it likely uses a loop to run each test case multiple times and measures the average execution time for each method.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach:**

1. **insertBefore**:
	* Pros: Can be faster if the first child is large or complex, as it avoids inserting at the beginning.
	* Cons: May require more DOM manipulation if the first child needs to be rearranged.
2. **prepend**:
	* Pros: Often faster and simpler, as it only requires prepending the element without affecting existing children.
	* Cons: Can be slower if the container has many elements before the insertion point.

**Library Usage**

None of the test cases use a specific library or framework.

**Special JS Features/Syntax**

The benchmark uses some standard JavaScript features:

1. `document.getElementById` and `document.createElement` for DOM manipulation.
2. `forEach` loop (not explicitly shown) to run each test case multiple times.

**Other Alternatives**

For similar benchmarks, you might see comparisons between other insertion methods, such as:

* `appendChild`
* `insertAdjacentHTML`
* Using a library like jQuery or React for DOM manipulation

Keep in mind that the specific benchmark design and execution may vary depending on the requirements and goals of the comparison.

If you're interested in running similar benchmarks, MeasureThat.net provides an API for creating custom benchmarks. You can also explore other JavaScript performance testing tools and libraries, such as Benchmark.js or jsperf.com.

Related benchmarks:

JS: insertBefore vs prepend (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: insertBefore vs prepend

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

insertBefore

prepend

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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