Benchmark: querySelector on HTML tag dir attribute vs. closest

HTML Preparation code:

<html dir="rtl">
  <body>
    <div>
      <div>
        <div>
          <div>
            <div id="test"></div>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Script Preparation code:

window.theDiv = document.querySelector('#test');

Tests:

getting the html tag with querySelector
const theHtml = document.querySelector('[dir=rtl]');
getting the html tag with closest
const theHtml = theDiv.closest('[dir=rtl]')

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
getting the html tag with querySelector
getting the html tag with closest

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 26 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

**Benchmark Overview**

The provided benchmark compares two approaches to query HTML elements: `querySelector` and `closest`. The test cases focus on retrieving an element using its directory attribute (`dir=rtl`) versus leveraging the closest relation between the current element and another that matches the specified value.

**Test Cases and Libraries**

1. **`querySelector`**: The first test case uses `document.querySelector('[dir=rtl]')`, which is a method in JavaScript's DOM API for selecting elements based on attributes.
2. **`closest`**: The second test case uses `theDiv.closest('[dir=rtl]')`, where `closest` is a polyfill provided by Modernizr, a popular library for detecting modern browser features.

**Library: Modernizr**

Modernizr is a JavaScript library that provides a way to detect whether certain HTML5 and CSS3 features are supported in the user's browser. In this benchmark, Modernizr's `closest` function is used as a fallback for older browsers that don't support native `closest` functionality.

**Special JS Feature: `dir` attribute**

The `dir` attribute is an HTML attribute used to specify the direction of text within an element's content. It was introduced in HTML 4.01 and has since been supported by various browsers, including Chrome.

**Options Compared**

1. **`querySelector`**: The native method for selecting elements based on attributes.
2. **`closest`**: A polyfill provided by Modernizr for older browsers that don't support native `closest` functionality.

**Pros and Cons of Each Approach**

*   **`querySelector`**:
    *   Pros: Native JavaScript API, efficient performance, widely supported across browsers.
    *   Cons: May be slower than `closest` in some cases due to attribute parsing.
*   **`closest`** (via Modernizr):
    *   Pros: Provides a fallback for older browsers that don't support native `closest`, can be faster than native `querySelector` in some scenarios.
    *   Cons: Introduces additional overhead due to the polyfill, may not be as efficient as native methods.

**Other Alternatives**

For those seeking alternatives to these approaches:

*   **`getElementsByAttribute()`**: Another method for selecting elements based on attributes. However, it's less efficient and widely supported than `querySelector`.
*   **Custom solution**: In some cases, developers might prefer a custom implementation using a CSS selector or other techniques.

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 4 years ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.83 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 85 on Mac OS X 10.15.6

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
getting the html tag with querySelector	4620319.0 Ops/sec
getting the html tag with closest	3669461.2 Ops/sec

Related benchmarks:

querySelector on HTML tag dir attribute vs. closest (version: 0)

Figuring out what's faster, to querySelect the HTML tag or use the javascript closest

Comparing performance of: getting the html tag with querySelector vs getting the html tag with closest

Created: 4 years ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

getting the html tag with querySelector

getting the html tag with closest

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated 26 days ago):