How to select sibling elements in XPath?

To select sibling elements in XPath the preceding-sibling and following-sibling axes can be used - see these interactive examples:

1. preceding-sibling::span will select any siblings that precede (i.e. are above) the current element:

2. following-sibling::span will select siblings that follow (i.e. are below) the current element:

Note that the wildcard character can be used instead of explicit element names (e.g. following-sibling::*) to select siblings of any element name.

For more on XPath, see our full introduction article