benchmark.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rubygems'
require 'open-uri'
require 'hpricot'
require 'nokogiri'
require 'better-benchmark'

uri = URI.parse( 'http://static.bezurk.com/fragments/wikitravel/sin.xml' )
content = uri.read

puts "\nhpricot vs. nokogiri: Parsing XML"
result = Benchmark.compare_realtime(
  :iterations => 10,
  :inner_iterations => 15000,
  :verbose => true
) {
  Hpricot.XML content
}.with {
  Nokogiri::XML content
}
Benchmark.report_on result

puts "\nhpricot vs. nokogiri: Searching with XPath"
result = Benchmark.compare_realtime(
  :iterations => 10,
  :inner_iterations => 2000,
  :verbose => true
) {
  doc = Hpricot.XML(content)
  info = doc.search('//location/info').first.inner_text
  url = doc.search('//location/refUrl').first.inner_text
}.with {
  doc = Nokogiri::XML(content)
  info = doc.xpath('//location/info').first.inner_text
  url = doc.xpath('//location/refUrl').first.inner_text
}
Benchmark.report_on result

puts "\nhpricot vs. nokogiri: Searching with CSS"
result = Benchmark.compare_realtime(
  :iterations => 10,
  :inner_iterations => 2000,
  :verbose => true
) {
  doc = Hpricot.XML(content)
  info = doc.search('location info').first.inner_text
  url = doc.search('location refUrl').first.inner_text
}.with {
  doc = Nokogiri::XML(content)
  info = doc.search('location info').first.inner_text
  url = doc.search('location refUrl').first.inner_text
}
Benchmark.report_on result

Result

hpricot vs. nokogiri: Parsing XML
..........
Set 1 mean: 5.368 s
Set 1 std dev: 0.052
Set 2 mean: 0.703 s
Set 2 std dev: 0.054
p.value: 1.0825088224469e-05
W: 100.0
The difference (-86.9%) IS statistically significant.

hpricot vs. nokogiri: Searching with XPath
..........
Set 1 mean: 3.590 s
Set 1 std dev: 0.250
Set 2 mean: 0.676 s
Set 2 std dev: 0.055
p.value: 1.0825088224469e-05
W: 100.0
The difference (-81.2%) IS statistically significant.

hpricot vs. nokogiri: Searching with CSS
..........
Set 1 mean: 4.237 s
Set 1 std dev: 0.061
Set 2 mean: 2.463 s
Set 2 std dev: 0.069
p.value: 1.0825088224469e-05
W: 100.0
The difference (-41.9%) IS statistically significant.

Summary

Use Nokogiri's XPath selectors for fastest speed - CSS-based search is faster
than Hpricot but not as fast.

Also take note that this benchmark is only shows parsing of XML (not HTML).

This benchmark takes the original and uses better-benchmark instead.