Element: previousElementSibling property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The Element.previousElementSibling read-only property returns the Element immediately prior to the specified one in its parent's children list, or null if the specified element is the first one in the list.

Value

An Element object, or null.

Examples

html
<div id="div-01">Here is div-01</div>
<div id="div-02">Here is div-02</div>
<li>This is a list item</li>
<li>This is another list item</li>
<div id="div-03">Here is div-03</div>

<script>
  let el = document.getElementById("div-03").previousElementSibling;
  document.write("<p>Siblings of div-03</p><ol>");
  while (el) {
    document.write("<li>" + el.nodeName + "</li>");
    el = el.previousElementSibling;
  }
  document.write("</ol>");
</script>

This example outputs the following into the page when it loads:

Siblings of div-03

   1. LI
   2. LI
   3. DIV
   4. DIV

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# ref-for-dom-nondocumenttypechildnode-previouselementsibling②

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also