jQuery element[attribute=something] vs element.class performance

Question

I am wondering which way would end up being faster, selecting elements by:

$('element[href=#my_link]');

or:

$('element.my_class');

I don't like repeating myself when I write code, so I prefer to write it the first way for the most part because then I can add information to it like:

<a href="#delete_1">Delete</a>


$('a[href^=#delete]');

and then split it up so that I have all of the information that I need once it is clicked, or whatever the action may be. Am I sacrificing overall performance because of this?

(I guess I could rewrite it as class="delete" href="#1")

Answer 1

Hi,

• selecting an Element by class needs : 453 ms
• selecting an Element by element + search needs 578 ms

both in FireFox.

Checkout this great Webpage for more tests:

Jquery Performance