Benchmark: textContent vs replaceChildren divs

HTML Preparation code:

 <div id="title"><div><div><div>asd sad sa dsad</div></div></div><div><div><div>asd sad sa dsad</div></div></div><div><div><div>asd sad sa dsad</div></div></div><div><div><div>asd sad sa dsad</div></div></div></div>
    <div id="url"><div><div><div>asd sad sa dsad</div></div></div><div><div><div>asd sad sa dsad</div></div></div><div><div><div>asd sad sa dsad</div></div></div><div><div><div>asd sad sa dsad</div></div></div></div>

Script Preparation code:

const title = document.getElementById('title');
const url = document.getElementById('url');

Tests:

textContent
title.textContent = ""; url.textContent = "";
replaceChildren
title.replaceChildren(); url.replaceChildren();

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
textContent
replaceChildren

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:129.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/129.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 129 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
textContent	876706.2 Ops/sec
replaceChildren	655303.5 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into the Benchmark Definition and test cases.

**Benchmark Description**

The benchmark measures the performance difference between two approaches when updating the text content of HTML elements versus replacing the children nodes of those elements. The test is designed to compare the speed of these operations in different browsers.

**Options Compared**

Two options are compared:

1. **textContent**: This approach uses the `textContent` property to set or get the text content of an element.
2. **replaceChildren**: This approach uses the `replaceChildren()` method to replace the children nodes of an element with a new set of child nodes.

**Pros and Cons**

* **textContent**:
	+ Pros: Simple and intuitive, widely supported across browsers.
	+ Cons: Can be slower than replacing children nodes if the text content is large or complex.
* **replaceChildren**:
	+ Pros: May be faster for large or complex text content, as it only updates a reference to the child nodes instead of creating a new string.
	+ Cons: Requires more CPU resources and may have performance implications in certain browsers.

**Other Considerations**

When updating the text content of an element, it's essential to consider factors like:

* **Text node creation**: Creating a new text node can be expensive, especially for large or complex text content. Replacing children nodes can reduce this overhead.
* **Browser support**: While `textContent` is widely supported, some browsers may have limitations or quirks when working with this property.

**Library and Its Purpose**

In the provided benchmark definition, there is no explicit mention of a library being used. However, it's likely that the browser's DOM API (Document Object Model) is being utilized to manipulate the HTML elements.

**Special JS Feature/Syntax**

There are no special JavaScript features or syntaxes mentioned in this benchmark. The code snippets only use standard JavaScript syntax and the DOM API.

Now, let's look at some alternative approaches or considerations for similar benchmarks:

* **Alternative approach**: Using a library like jQuery to manipulate the DOM elements might provide faster performance, but it would also introduce additional overhead due to the library's abstraction layer.
* **Browser-specific optimizations**: Some browsers may have specific optimizations or APIs for updating text content or replacing children nodes. For example, Chrome has a `textContent` optimization that can be used with the `MutationObserver` API.
* **Text content processing**: Depending on the use case, you might need to consider factors like text encoding (e.g., UTF-8), character normalization, or language-specific handling when updating text content.

Keep in mind that benchmarking performance is a complex task and may require careful consideration of various factors, including browser versions, hardware configurations, and specific use cases.

Related benchmarks:

textContent vs replaceChildren divs (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: textContent vs replaceChildren

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

textContent

replaceChildren

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):