Traversing Sideways in the DOM Tree
In addition to moving up and down the DOM tree, jQuery also provides methods for traversing sideways—that is, selecting elements that share the same parent as the current element (known as siblings).
Here are the most commonly used jQuery methods for sideways traversal:
- siblings() – Selects all sibling elements.
- next() – Selects the next sibling element.
- nextAll() – Selects all following siblings.
- nextUntil() – Selects all following siblings up to (but not including) a specified element.
- prev() – Selects the previous sibling element.
- prevAll() – Selects all preceding siblings.
- prevUntil() – Selects all preceding siblings up to (but not including) a specified element.
These methods give you fine-grained control when navigating between elements at the same level of the DOM structure.
jQuery siblings() Method
The siblings() method is used to select all sibling elements of a specified element — that is, elements that share the same parent but are not the selected element itself.
Example
The following code retrieves all sibling elements of every <h2> tag on the page:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("h2").siblings();
});
This is helpful when you want to target elements that are on the same level in the DOM tree, such as other items in a list or elements within the same container.
You can also pass a selector to the siblings() method to filter the results and return only specific sibling elements.
Example: Filter Siblings by Element Type
The following example selects only the <p> elements that are siblings of each <h2>:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("h2").siblings("p");
});
This is especially useful when you want to interact with or style only certain types of sibling elements, rather than all of them.
jQuery next() Method
The next() method is used to select the immediate next sibling of a selected element — that is, the element that appears directly after it in the DOM and shares the same parent.
Example
The following code selects the next sibling of each <h2> element on the page:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("h2").next();
});
This method is useful when you need to work with the element that directly follows another, such as the next item in a list or the next section in a layout.
jQuery nextAll() Method
The nextAll() method is used to select all following siblings of the selected element. These are elements that come after the selected one at the same DOM level.
Example
The following example retrieves all sibling elements that follow each <h2> on the page:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("h2").nextAll();
});
This is useful when you want to apply changes or actions to all elements that appear after a certain point in the DOM structure.
jQuery nextUntil() Method
The nextUntil() method allows you to select all next sibling elements between two specified elements in the DOM.
It starts from the selected element and collects siblings up to, but not including, the element matched by the given selector.
Example
The following example selects all sibling elements that appear between <h2> and <h6> elements:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("h2").nextUntil("h6");
});
This method is ideal when you need to work with a specific range of elements in a sequence, rather than all following siblings.
