Benchmark: Parents vs Closest

HTML Preparation code:

<ul>
	<li class="current">1</li>
	<li>2</li>
	<li>3</li>	   
</ul>

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

item = $('.current');

Tests:

Closest
console.log(item.closest('ul'));
Parents
console.log(item.parents('ul:first'));

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Closest
Parents

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Sumamry (model llama3.2:3b, generated 16 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down what's being tested in this JavaScript benchmark.

**Overview**

The benchmark is comparing the performance of two approaches to find the closest or parent element in an HTML document: `closest()` and `parents()`, both from jQuery library.

**Benchmark Definition JSON**

The `Benchmark Definition` json contains the setup for each test case:

* `Script Preparation Code`: This code snippet prepares a jQuery variable named `item` by selecting an element with class `current` using `$`. The exact HTML structure is defined in the `Html Preparation Code`.
* `Html Preparation Code`: This code generates the initial HTML structure, including a nested `<ul>` element. The JavaScript script loads jQuery library.

**Individual Test Cases**

The two test cases are:

1. **Closest**: This test case logs the closest element to the `item` variable using the `closest()` method.
2. **Parents**: This test case logs the parent elements of the `item` variable using the `parents()` method.

**Options Compared**

The benchmark is comparing the performance of two approaches:

* `closest()`: This method searches for an element that matches a given selector within a single document.
* `parents()`: This method returns an array of parent elements, allowing the caller to traverse up the DOM tree.

**Pros and Cons**

Here's a brief summary of the pros and cons of each approach:

* **`closest()`**:
	+ Pros: More efficient for simple cases, as it only traverses the current element.
	+ Cons: May not be suitable for more complex scenarios where you need to traverse up the DOM tree.
* **`parents()`**:
	+ Pros: Allows for traversal of the entire DOM tree from the given element, making it useful for finding ancestors or siblings.
	+ Cons: May be slower than `closest()` due to additional overhead.

**jQuery Library and Its Purpose**

The benchmark uses jQuery library, which is a popular JavaScript library for DOM manipulation and event handling. jQuery provides a simplified way of interacting with HTML elements by wrapping the native DOM API in a more intuitive syntax.

In this context, jQuery's `closest()` and `parents()` methods are convenient shortcuts for finding an element that matches a given selector within or from the nearest ancestor element, respectively. These methods can be useful in various scenarios, such as:

* Finding the closest image to display its original size
* Retrieving parent elements for styling or layout purposes

**JavaScript Features**

This benchmark does not explicitly use any special JavaScript features or syntax beyond what is standard in modern JavaScript development (e.g., ES6+ syntax). However, keep in mind that some browsers may still support legacy JavaScript features due to their widespread adoption.

**Other Alternatives**

If you're interested in exploring alternative approaches for finding closest or parent elements, here are a few options:

* **`querySelector()` and `querySelectorAll()`**: These native DOM methods can be used to find an element that matches a given selector within a single document.
* **`document.querySelector()` and `document.querySelectorAll()`**: Similar to the previous option, but applied at the global scope.
* **Custom implementations**: Depending on your specific use case, you might consider implementing a custom solution using JavaScript's built-in DOM methods (e.g., `parentElement`, `closestElement`) or other libraries.

Keep in mind that these alternatives may have different performance characteristics and may require more manual iteration over the DOM tree.

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/15.5 Safari/605.1.15

Browser/OS: Safari 15 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
Closest	496213.9 Ops/sec
Parents	260307.8 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

Parents vs Closest (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Closest vs Parents

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

Closest

Parents

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Sumamry (model llama3.2:3b, generated 16 days ago):