Run results for: Traverse function vs NodeIterator vs TreeWalker for TEXT nodes

Run details:

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/114.0

Browser: Firefox 114

Operating system: Mac OS X 10.15

Device Platform: Desktop

Date tested: 11 months ago

Test name	Executions per second
Traverse function	236338.8 Ops/sec
NodeIterator	464425.3 Ops/sec
TreeWalker	305889.8 Ops/sec

Script Preparation code:

// language=HTML
const html = `
    <!-- article out start -->
    <article>
        <!-- article in start -->
        <h1>Lorem ipsum</h1>
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Cumque, nostrum.</p>
        <!-- article in end -->
    </article>
    <!-- article out end -->

    <!-- article out start -->
    <article>
        <!-- article in start -->
        <h1>Lorem ipsum</h1>
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Cumque, nostrum.</p>
        <!-- article in end -->
    </article>
    <!-- article out end -->

    <!-- article out start -->
    <article>
        <!-- article in start -->
        <h1>Lorem ipsum</h1>
        <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Cumque, nostrum.</p>
        <!-- article in end -->
    </article>
    <!-- article out end -->
`;
const template = document.createElement('template');
template.innerHTML = html;

window.testTemplate = template;

window.testTraverse = function traverse(node, use) {
    if (!node) return;

    use(node);
    traverse(node.firstChild, use);
    traverse(node.nextSibling, use);
}

Tests:

Traverse function
const textNodes = []; testTraverse(testTemplate.content.firstChild, node => { if (node.nodeType === Node.SHOW_TEXT) { textNodes.push(node); } });
NodeIterator
const nodeIterator = document.createNodeIterator( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT ); const textNodes = []; while (nodeIterator.nextNode()) { textNodes.push(nodeIterator.currentNode); }
TreeWalker
const treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker( testTemplate.content, NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT ); const textNodes = []; while (treeWalker.nextNode()) { textNodes.push(treeWalker.currentNode); }

Run results for: Traverse function vs NodeIterator vs TreeWalker for TEXT nodes

Let's compare the speed of 3 different ways to traverse the DOM.

Traverse function

NodeIterator

TreeWalker