Benchmark: textContent vs nodeValue vs data vs inner html

HTML Preparation code:

<div id="el"> </div>

Script Preparation code:

var a = document.querySelector('#el');

Tests:

element.textContent
a.textContent = Math.random();
node.textContent
a.firstChild.textContent = Math.random();
node.nodeValue
a.firstChild.nodeValue = Math.random();
node.data
a.firstChild.data = Math.random();
element.innerHtml
a.innerHtml = Math.random();

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
element.textContent
node.textContent
node.nodeValue
node.data
element.innerHtml

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 14 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 131 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
element.textContent	616590.4 Ops/sec
node.textContent	680349.0 Ops/sec
node.nodeValue	640152.1 Ops/sec
node.data	675775.5 Ops/sec
element.innerHtml	31570694.0 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

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

**What is tested:**

The provided JSON benchmark measures the performance differences between four approaches to access and modify text content in HTML elements:

1. `textContent`
2. `nodeValue` (for the child nodes)
3. `data`
4. `innerHtml`

These properties are used to retrieve or set the text content of an element, and they have different implications on how the browser renders the element.

**Options compared:**

The benchmark compares the performance of these four approaches:

* `textContent`: Accessing the text content directly.
* `nodeValue` (for child nodes): Accessing the text content through the first child node.
* `data`: This option is not a standard property, but it's likely an alias for `nodeValue` when accessing child nodes. However, in this case, it's used to access the data of the element, which might be different from what's expected.
* `innerHtml`: Accessing and setting the inner HTML content.

**Pros and Cons:**

* **textContent**: Pros:
	+ Most straightforward way to access text content.
	+ Fastest approach ( likely due to direct access).
* Cons:
	+ Might not work as expected if the element has multiple child nodes or complex structure.
* `nodeValue` (for child nodes):
	+ Pros:
		- Efficient when accessing the text content of a single child node.
		- Can be used with elements having multiple child nodes.
	+ Cons:
		- May have performance implications due to the need to traverse the DOM tree.
		- Might not work as expected if the element has complex structure or no child nodes.
* `data`:
	+ This option is likely an alias for `nodeValue`, but it's used differently in this benchmark. It's unclear what behavior is expected from this property, and its performance implications are uncertain.
	+ Pros: None explicitly mentioned.
	+ Cons:
		- Unclear behavior and potential performance issues due to the use of this non-standard property.
* `innerHtml`:
	+ Pros:
		- Can be used to set the content, but it's less efficient than using `textContent`.
	+ Cons:
		- Slower approach due to the need to parse and render the HTML string.

**Library and special JS features:**

There are no libraries mentioned in the provided JSON. However, the use of `nodeValue` (for child nodes) might imply that the benchmark is testing the handling of multiple child nodes in different browsers.

No special JavaScript features or syntax are explicitly used in this benchmark.

**Other alternatives:**

If you're interested in exploring alternative approaches to measuring performance in JavaScript benchmarks:

* **Benchmarking frameworks:** Consider using established frameworks like BenchmarkJS, js-benchmark, or Micro-Benchmark.
* **Different testing strategies:** Experiment with different testing techniques, such as measuring the execution time of individual functions, using parallel tests, or testing the effects of various optimization flags.

Keep in mind that each benchmark is unique and should be designed to answer specific questions about performance.

Related benchmarks:

textContent vs nodeValue vs data vs inner html (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: element.textContent vs node.textContent vs node.nodeValue vs node.data vs element.innerHtml

Created: 8 months ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

element.textContent

node.textContent

node.nodeValue

node.data

element.innerHtml

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):