How to get the Previous Sibling name

Question

I need to get the name of the previous sibling . to keep it simple i have some sample code

Answer 1

Using jQuery it would be:

$('#item2').prev().attr("name")​​​​​​​​​​;​

With regular javascript you would need to use the following function (to ensure whitespace nodes are ignored)

getPreviousSiblingName(document.getElementById("item2"))

function getpreviousSiblingName(element) {
    var p = element;
    do p = p.previousSibling;
    while (p && p.nodeType != 1);
    return p.attributes["name"].value;
}