Benchmark: getElementById.getElementsByClassName vs getElementsByClassName vs getElementById.childNodes

HTML Preparation code:

<div id="header">
		<div id="logo">
			<img src="images/logo.png" alt="the network"/>
		</div>	
		<div id="search">
			<form method="get">
				<input type="text" name="post" placeholder="thoughts?"/>
				<input type="submit" value="Post">
			</form>
		</div>
	</div>
</div>	
<div id="page">
  <p>some message</p>
  <p>some message</p>
  <p>some message</p>
  <p>some message</p>
  <p>some message</p>
  <p>some message</p>
  <p>some message</p>
  <p>some message</p>
  <p>some message</p>
</div>

Tests:

getElementById.childNodes
var form = document.getElementById("search").childNodes[0];
getElementById.getElementsByTagName
var form = document.getElementById("search").getElementsByTagName("form")[0];
getElementsByTagName
var form = document.getElementsByTagName("form")[0];
getElementById
var form = document.getElementById("search");

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
getElementById.childNodes
getElementById.getElementsByTagName
getElementsByTagName
getElementById

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 break down the provided benchmark and explain what is being tested, compared, and their pros and cons.

**Benchmark Overview**

The provided benchmark compares four different approaches to retrieve an HTML element:

1. `getElementById`
2. `getElementsByClassName` (both native DOM methods)
3. `getElementsByTagName` (native DOM method for getting elements by tag name)
4. `getElementById.childNodes` (getting the child nodes of an element using `getElementById`)

**Individual Test Cases**

Each test case is a separate benchmark that measures the performance of a specific approach:

1. **getElementById**: Retrieves the first child node of the `#search` element.
2. **getElementById.getElementsByTagName**: Retrieves the first form element within the `#search` element using `getElementsByTagName`.
3. **getElementsByTagName**: Retrieves all form elements within the document and returns the first one (index 0).
4. **getElementById.childNodes**: Retrieves the child nodes of the `#search` element.

**Comparison**

The benchmark compares these four approaches to retrieve an HTML element, with a focus on performance.

**Native DOM Methods: getElementsByClassName and getElementsByTagName**

These two methods are native DOM APIs that allow retrieving elements based on various criteria. However, they have some limitations:

* `getElementsByClassName` returns a live HTMLCollection object, which can be slow due to the overhead of maintaining the collection.
* `getElementsByTagName` returns an HTMLCollection object, but it only contains one element at index 0.

**Approach Pros and Cons**

1. **getElementById**: Fast and efficient, as it directly accesses the DOM node using its id. However, if multiple elements have the same id, this approach can lead to unexpected behavior.
2. **getElementsByClassName**: Can be slow due to the overhead of maintaining the collection. However, it provides a flexible way to retrieve elements based on class names.
3. **getElementsByTagName**: Fast and efficient for retrieving the first form element, but it only returns one element at index 0.

**Non-Native Methods**

1. `getElementById.childNodes`: Returns all child nodes of an element, which can be slower than using native DOM methods.

**Library Usage: None**

There are no libraries used in this benchmark.

**Special JS Features/Syntax: None**

This benchmark does not use any special JavaScript features or syntax.

**Alternatives**

If you need to retrieve elements based on different criteria, you may consider using other approaches:

* **CSS selectors**: Using CSS selectors (e.g., `document.querySelector('#search form')`) can be a fast and efficient way to retrieve elements.
* **Querying libraries**: Libraries like jQuery or Sizzle provide optimized ways to query the DOM.

Keep in mind that the choice of approach depends on the specific use case, performance requirements, and personal preference.

Latest run results:

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

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:97.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/97.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 97 on Mac OS X 10.15

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
getElementById.childNodes	4539287.5 Ops/sec
getElementById.getElementsByTagName	4135048.2 Ops/sec
getElementsByTagName	5358205.5 Ops/sec
getElementById	11176297.0 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

getElementById.getElementsByClassName vs getElementsByClassName vs getElementById.childNodes (version: 0)

getElementById vs getElementsByClassName

Comparing performance of: getElementById.childNodes vs getElementById.getElementsByTagName vs getElementsByTagName vs getElementById

Created: 5 years ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

getElementById.childNodes

getElementById.getElementsByTagName

getElementsByTagName

getElementById

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):