jQuery .prev() of a type regardless of it's parent etc

Question

is there a simple way to get the previous occurrence of an element in the DOM? If I\'m looking at #text3 and I want to get ahold of the previous input #text2<

Answer 1

I've created a new jQuery plugin which returns the "real" previous input element. Include this code:

(function($){
    $.fn.realPrev = function(selector){
        var thisElem = this.get(0); //Get DOM element for comparison
        var lastElement, foundElement = null;
        $(selector).each(function(){
            if(this == thisElem){
                foundElement = lastElement;
                return false;
            }
            lastElement = this;
        });
        return $(foundElement);
    }
})(jQuery);

Usage:

$("#input3").realPrev("input");

Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/QWRWh/