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Building Your Own Virtual DOM in JavaScript: A Step-by-Step Guide

Unlock the power of efficient DOM manipulation with a custom Virtual DOM implementation

Max N
6 min readMar 10, 2024

When building modern web applications, efficient DOM manipulation is crucial for optimal performance. The Virtual DOM (VDOM) concept, popularized by frameworks like React, has revolutionized the way developers interact with the DOM by allowing for batched updates and intelligent diffing algorithms.

While frameworks like React provide their own implementation of the Virtual DOM, understanding how it works under the hood can be invaluable for developers seeking a deeper understanding of this powerful technique.

In this article, we’ll explore the process of building a custom Virtual DOM implementation in JavaScript from scratch. By the end, you’ll have a solid grasp of the core concepts and a working implementation that you can use in your own projects or further extend and customize.

Understanding the Virtual DOM

The Virtual DOM is a lightweight in-memory representation of the actual DOM. Instead of directly manipulating the DOM, which can be an expensive operation, changes are first made to the Virtual DOM. The Virtual DOM engine then calculates the minimal set of changes…

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Max N
Max N

Written by Max N

A writer that writes about JavaScript and Python to beginners. If you find my articles helpful, feel free to follow.

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