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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T10:04:36+00:00

I have the following HTML: <body>Testing1<span id=t1 style=background-color: green;>Testing2</span>Testing3</body> When I try the following:

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I have the following HTML:

<body>Testing1<span id="t1" style="background-color: green;">Testing2</span>Testing3</body>

When I try the following:

alert(window.jQuery('#t1').prev().nodeType); // undefined - tried get(0) as well

alert(window.jQuery('#t1').get(0).nodeType); // 1

alert(window.jQuery('#t1').next().nodeType); // undefined

Why is it that I get undefined when I try to get the node type of the previous and next text elements?

The weird thing is if I put a b tag before the span, the prev().get(0).nodeType returns a 1 does that mean text nodes and comments are undetectable??

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The problem is that prev and next return jQuery objects, not DOM elements. You will have to use get again:

    alert(window.jQuery('#t1').next().get(0).nodeType);

    Note that you can alternatively use array syntax to get the underlying DOM element at the specified index:

    alert(window.jQuery('#t1').next()[0].nodeType);

    Edit

    Just re-read your question and saw that you’ve already tried that. You are right in thinking that prev and next will not get text or comment nodes. They will only get elements.

    The text node that precedes #t1 is not an element, so prev will not return anything (there are no sibling elements preceding or following #t1).

    You could do this:

    alert(window.jQuery('#t1').get(0).previousSibling.nodeType); //3
alert(window.jQuery('#t1').get(0).nextSibling.nodeType); //3

    But I’m not entirely sure of the browser compatibility of those.

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