A virtual DOM is a lightweight

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representation of the Document Object Model (DOM) used in declarative web frameworks such as

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, and

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. Updating the virtual DOM is comparatively faster than updating the actual DOM (via JavaScript). Thus, the framework is free to make unnecessary changes to the virtual DOM relatively cheaply. The framework then finds the differences between the previous virtual DOM and the current one, and only makes the necessary changes to the actual DOM.

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does not have a virtual DOM, and its creator Rich Harris calls the virtual DOM "pure overhead". Related techniques include Ember.js' Glimmer and Angular's incremental DOM.

References

{{Compu-stub Web development Object models