XML DOM previousSibling Property
 Complete Element Object Reference
Definition and Usage
The previousSibling property returns the previous sibling node (the
previous node
in the same tree level) of the selected
element
If there is no such node, this property returns null.
Syntax
| elementNode.previousSibling |
Tips and Notes
Note: Firefox, and most other browsers, will treat empty white-spaces
or new lines as text nodes, Internet Explorer will not. So, in the example
below, we have a function that checks the node type of the previous sibling node.
Element nodes has a nodeType of 1, so if the previous sibling node is not an element
node, it moves to the previous node, and checks if this node is an element node.
This continues until the previous sibling node (which must be an element
node) is found. This way, the result will be correct in all browsers.
Tip: To read more about the differences between browsers, visit our
DOM Browsers chapter in our XML DOM
Tutorial.
Example
The following code fragment loads "books.xml"
into xmlDoc using
loadXMLDoc() and gets the previous sibling node from the first <author>
element:
Example
//check if the previous sibling node is an element node
function get_previoussibling(n)
{
x=n.previousSibling;
while (x.nodeType!=1)
{
x=x.previousSibling;
}
return x;
}
xmlDoc=loadXMLDoc("books.xml");
x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("author")[0];
document.write(x.nodeName);
document.write(" = ");
document.write(x.childNodes[0].nodeValue);
y=get_previoussibling(x);
document.write("<br />Previous sibling: ");
document.write(y.nodeName);
document.write(" = ");
document.write(y.childNodes[0].nodeValue);
|
The output of the code above will be:
author = Giada De Laurentiis
Previous sibling: title = Everyday Italian
|
Try it yourself »
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Try-It-Yourself Demos
nextSibling - Get the next sibling of a node
Complete Element Object Reference
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