JavaScript append and prepend vs jQuery append and prepend

Question

^{QA Style}

I recently read an article and it says that JavaScript has implemented append and prepend methods inspired from jQuery.

It was a new knowledge for me because as far as I know to append an element, I had to use element.appendChild and to prepend an element, I had to use element.insertBefore(newElement,element.children[0]).

But jQuery's append and prepend have lots of features like accepting multiple arguments.

So my question is

What are all the differences between JavaScript's append prepend and jQuery's append prepend have (in ease of use and in performance)

Not a dupe of Append Vs AppendChild JQuery

Answer 1

Tl; Dr

as usuall , JavaScript is faster than jQuery.

jQuery's append and prepend can be executed on a jQuery object which consist of multiple HTML elements but JavaScript's append and prepend can be executed only single HTML element.

jQuery's append and prepend can take HTML element, htmlString, jQuery object, plain text or array of HTML elements as input but JavaScript's append and prepend can take only HTML element and string(which will be converted to textNode).

The long answer

JavaScript implemented append and prepend but the browser support is not upto the expectation.

According to MDN,

The browser support is Chrome 54+, Firefox 49+ and Opera 39+.

Tested on Edge and it is not working.

1. append

JavaScript

From MDN

The ParentNode.append method inserts a set of Node objects or DOMString objects after the last child of the ParentNode. DOMString objects are inserted as equivalent Text nodes.

syntax

ParentNode.append(val1,val2,val3);

The val can be either an HTML element or a string(which will be converted to textNode)

jQuery

From api.jQuery.com

Insert content, specified by the parameter, to the end of each element in the set of matched elements.

syntax

jQueryCollection.append(val1,valn);

The val can be html string or element or text or array or another jQuery object

The difference between jQuery and JavaScript

jQuery append can be applied to a jQuery object that is a collection of HTML elements but JavaScript append can be applied to a single element

Performance measurement

The test is done to append things to 500 divs.

JavaScript - append with HTML element

document.querySelectorAll('div').forEach(x=> x.append(document.createElement('span')));

6.0ms

jQuery

$('div').append(document.createElement('span'));

70.0ms

JavaScript append with plain text

document.querySelectorAll('div').forEach(x=> x.append('Hello'));

4.0ms

jQuery append with plain text

$('div').append('Hello');

14.0ms

as normal, JavaScript is faster than jQuery but jQuery can take more types of arguments and easy to write.

2. prepend

JavaScript

From MDN

The ParentNode.prepend method inserts a set of Node objects or DOMString objects before the first child of the ParentNode. DOMString objects are inserted as equivalent Text nodes.

syntax

ParentNode.prepend(val1,val2,val3);

The val can be either an HTML element or a string(which will be converted to textNode) or array

jQuery

From api.jQuery.com

Insert content, specified by the parameter, to the beginning of each element in the set of matched elements.

syntax

jQueryCollection.prepend(val1,valn);

The val can be html string or element or text or array or another jQuery object

The difference between jQuery and JavaScript

jQuery prepend can be applied to a jQuery object that is a collection of HTML elements but JavaScript prepend can be applied to a single element

Performance measurement

The test is done to prepend things to 500 divs.

JavaScript - prepend with HTML element

document.querySelectorAll('div').forEach(x=> x.prepend(document.createElement('span')));

6.0ms

jQuery

$('div').prepend(document.createElement('span'));

63.0ms

JavaScript prepend with plain text

document.querySelectorAll('div').forEach(x=> x.prepend('Hello'));

4.005ms

jQuery prepend with plain text

$('div').prepend('Hello');

17.0ms

same here. JavaScript is faster than jQuery but jQuery can take more types of arguments and easy to write.

---

A snippet with some codes used for the tests.

function jsAppend(){
  document.querySelectorAll('div').forEach(x=> {x.append(document.createElement('span'))});
}

function jsPrepend(){
  document.querySelectorAll('div').forEach(x=> {x.prepend(document.createElement('span'))});
}

function jqAppend(){
  $('div').append($('<span></span'));
}

function jqPrepend(){
  $('div').prepend($('<span></span'));
}

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