NodeIterator vs Xpath for DOM iterating/finding in Javascript

Question

Which is better to use when iterating over DOM elements or finding a a set of DOM elements. is Xpath faster?

Answer 1

Xpath is more clean.

EDIT: Sorry, I don't know if it is faster.

Answer 2

If you want to find a group of elements that are at different hiearchical levels and different attributes of interest then you should use Xpath.

If you just want to "iterate" one by one over a set of elements then just use the iterator.

Answer 3

The dojo team did some research about when XPath is faster for their dojo.query interface.

See their Blog Post about it.

Answer 4

according to this post "The DOM traversal code is about four times faster than the XPath code." http://www.sklar.com/blog/archives/85-Speed-DOM-traversal-vs.-XPath-in-PHP-5.html