Element.next(element[, expression[, index = 0]]) → Element
Element.next(element[, index = 0]) → Element

• expression (String) – A CSS selector.

Returns element's first following sibling (or the Nth, if index is specified) that matches expression. If no expression is provided, all following siblings are considered. If none matches these criteria, undefined is returned.

More information

The Element.next method is part of Prototype's ultimate DOM traversal toolkit (check out Element.up, Element.down and Element.previous for some more Prototypish niceness). It allows precise index-based and/or CSS expression-based selection of any of element's following siblings. (Note that two elements are considered siblings if they have the same parent, so for example, the head and body elements are siblings—their parent is the html element.)

As it totally ignores text nodes (it only returns elements), you don't have to worry about whitespace nodes.

And as an added bonus, all elements returned are already extended (see Element.extend) allowing chaining:

$(element).down(1).next('li', 2).hide();

Walking the DOM has never been that easy!

Arguments

If no arguments are passed, element's following sibling is returned (this is similar as calling nextSibling except Element.next returns an already extended element).

If index is defined, element's corresponding following sibling is returned. (This is equivalent to selecting an element from the array of elements returned by the method Element.nextSiblings). Note that the sibling right below element has an index of 0.

If expression is defined, Element.next will return the element first following sibling that matches it.

If both expression and index are defined, Element.next will collect all of element's following siblings matching the given CSS expression and will return the one at the specified index.

In all of the above cases, if no following sibling is found, undefined will be returned.

Examples

<ul id="fruits">
  <li id="apples">
    <h3 id="title">Apples</h3>
    <ul id="list-of-apples">
      <li id="golden-delicious">Golden Delicious</li>
      <li id="mutsu">Mutsu</li>
      <li id="mcintosh" class="yummy">McIntosh</li>
      <li id="ida-red" class="yummy">Ida Red</li>
    </ul>
    <p id="saying">An apple a day keeps the doctor away.</p>
  </li>
</ul>

Get the first sibling after "#title":

$('title').next();
// or:
$('title').next(0);
// -> ul#list-of-apples

Get the second sibling after "#title":

$('title').next(1);
// -> p#saying

Get the first sibling after "#title" with node name "p":

$('title').next('p');
// -> p#sayings

Get the first sibling after "#golden-delicious" with class name "yummy":

$('golden-delicious').next('.yummy');
// -> li#mcintosh

Get the second sibling after "#golden-delicious" with class name "yummy":

$('golden-delicious').next('.yummy', 1);
// -> li#ida-red

Try to get the first sibling after "#ida-red":

$('ida-red').next();
// -> undefined

This method can be called either as an instance method or as a generic method. If calling as a generic, pass the instance in as the first argument.