jQuery DOM Traversing Get previous element
Example
To get the previous element you can use the .prev() method.
<ul>
<li>Mark</li>
<li class="anna">Anna</li>
<li>Paul</li>
</ul>
If you are standing on the "Anna" element and you want to get the previous element, "Mark", the .prev() method will allow you to do that.
// "Mark" now has green text
$(".anna").prev().css("color", "green");
The method takes an optional selector argument, which can be used if the previous element must be a certain kind of element.
// Previous element is a "li", "Mark" now has green text
$(".anna").prev("li").css("color", "green");
If the previous element is not of the type selector then an empty set is returned, and the modifications will not do anything.
// Previous element is not a ".paul", nothing will be done in this case
$(".anna").prev(".paul").css("color", "green");
