Benchmark: innerHTML vs replaceChildrenxxx

HTML Preparation code:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td id="title"><div><button>Fefwefw</button></div><div><button>Fefwefw</button></div><div><button>Fefwefw</button></div></td>
    <td id="url"><div><button>Fefwefw</button></div><div><button>Fefwefw</button></div><div><button>Fefwefw</button></div><div><button>Fefwefw</button></div><div><button>Fefwefw</button></div></td>
  </tr>
</table>

Script Preparation code:

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

Tests:

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

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
innerHTML
replaceChildren

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's dive into the world of JavaScript microbenchmarks on MeasureThat.net.

**Benchmark Overview**

The benchmark measures the performance difference between two approaches to update HTML content in a web page: using `innerHTML` and `replaceChildren()`. The test creates a table with two cells, each containing a button. The `title` and `url` elements are updated by setting their innerHTML or replacing their children.

**Options Compared**

The benchmark compares the performance of two options:

1. **innerHTML**: This method updates the entire HTML content of an element by setting its `innerHTML` property to an empty string (`""`).
2. **replaceChildren()**: This method replaces the child nodes of an element with a new set of nodes.

**Pros and Cons**

*   **innerHTML**:
    *   Pros: Simple, easy to implement, and widely supported across browsers.
    *   Cons: Can be inefficient for large HTML documents, as it requires parsing and rebuilding the entire document tree. This can lead to slower performance compared to other methods like `replaceChildren()`.
*   **replaceChildren()**:
    *   Pros: More efficient than `innerHTML` for updating smaller sections of content, as it only replaces child nodes without affecting the rest of the document.
    *   Cons: Can be less familiar to developers who are not accustomed to working with this method.

**Library and Purpose**

In the provided benchmark code, no libraries are explicitly mentioned. However, some internal JavaScript methods are used:

*   `document.getElementById()`: Retrieves an element by its ID or a CSS selector.
*   `replaceChildren()`: Replaces the child nodes of an element.

These are built-in browser APIs and do not require any external libraries to be loaded.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

There is no special JavaScript feature or syntax used in this benchmark. It only relies on standard JavaScript methods for updating HTML content.

**Other Alternatives**

If you're interested in exploring alternative approaches to update HTML content, consider the following options:

1.  **DOMTraversing**: Instead of using `innerHTML` or `replaceChildren()`, you can use DOM traversal methods like `querySelector()` and `appendChild()` to update specific elements.
2.  **AJAX Updates**: For larger sections of content, you can use AJAX requests to dynamically update the HTML without requiring a full page reload.
3.  **Web Workers**: If performance-critical updates are necessary, you can consider using Web Workers to offload the work to separate threads.

Keep in mind that each alternative has its own trade-offs and requirements for implementation. It's essential to evaluate your specific use case and choose the most suitable approach based on factors like performance, maintenance complexity, and compatibility with different browsers or devices.

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one year ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/114.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 114 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
innerHTML	460332.8 Ops/sec
replaceChildren	618402.2 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

innerHTML vs replaceChildrenxxx (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: innerHTML vs replaceChildren

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

innerHTML

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):