Node.nextSibling

The Node.nextSibling read-only property returns the node immediately following the specified one in their parent's childNodes, or returns null if the specified node is the last child in the parent element.

Gecko-based browsers insert text nodes into a document to represent whitespace in the source markup. Therefore a node obtained, for example, using Node.firstChild or Node.previousSibling may refer to a whitespace text node rather than the actual element the author intended to get.

See Whitespace in the DOM and W3C DOM 3 FAQ: Why are some Text nodes empty? for more information.

Element.nextElementSibling may be used to obtain the next element skipping any whitespace nodes, other between-element text, or comments.

<div id="div-1">Here is div-1</div>
<div id="div-2">Here is div-2</div>

<script>
var el = document.getElementById('div-1').nextSibling,
    i = 1;

console.group('Siblings of div-1:');

while (el) {
  console.log(i, '. ', el.nodeName);
  el = el.nextSibling;
  i++;
}

console.groupEnd();
</script>

/**************************************************
  The console displays the following:

     Siblings of div-1

      1. #text
      2. DIV
      3. #text
      4. SCRIPT

**************************************************/

In the above example, #text nodes are inserted in the DOM where whitespace occurs between tags (i.e. after the closing tag of an element and before the opening tag of the next).

The possible inclusion of text nodes must be allowed for when traversing the DOM using nextSibling. See the resources in the Notes section.

• Element.nextElementSibling