How do I remove siblings from the DOM?

Question

I have this working code:

  a.parentNode.removeChild(a);

I need to also remove this child's previous sibling, ie the element that comes before it.

How do I update this? Does MDN have documentation on it?

Answer 1

Ok, here is a solution which takes into account that the previous sibling might not be an element node:

var previous = a.previousSibling;

// iterate until we find an element node or there is no previous sibling
while(previous && previous.nodeType !== 1) {
    previous = previous.previousSibling;
}

// if there is a sibling, remove it
if(previous) {
    previous.parentNode.removeChild(previous);
}

Reference: Node.previousSibling ^[MDN]

You could easily create a function which gives you the previous element node.

I will repeat my comment here:

You can find a reference of all DOM interfaces at MDN , in particular, the Node interface .