Sort navigation menu in jquery

Question

I want to sort the navigation menu with jQuery. The structure of nav menu is

<ul class="menu">
  <li class="item">
     <a class="link">one</a>
  </li>
  <li class="item">
     <a class="link">two</a>
  </li>
  <li class="item">
     <a class="link">three</a>
  </li>
  <li class="item">
     <a class="link">four</a>
  </li>
<ul>

I want to sort on the basis of the inner html of a tag. There is by default sort function in jquery. but it only sorts the strings. How I can sort the menu

Answer 1

var items = $('.menu li').get();
items.sort(function(a,b){ 
  var keyA = $(a).find('a').text();
  var keyB = $(b).find('a').text();

  if (keyA < keyB) return -1;
  if (keyA > keyB) return 1;
  return 0;
});
var ul = $('.menu');
ul.empty();
$.each(items, function(i, li){
  ul.append(li);
});

Sample

Answer 2

var sortedList = jQuery('.menu > li').sort(function (a, b) {
    return (a.children[0].innerHTML > b.children[0].innerHTML) ? 1 : -1;
});

jQuery('.menu').html(sortedList);