javascript - Easiest way to sort DOM nodes?

Question

If I have a list like this:

<ul id="mylist">
    <li id="list-item1">text 1</li>
    <li id="list-item2">text 2</li>
    <li id="list-item3">text 3</li>
    <li id="list-item4">text 4</li>
</ul>

What's the easiest way to re-arrange the DOM nodes to my preference? (This needs to happen automatically when the page loads, the list-order preference is gained from a cookie)

E.g.

<ul id="mylist">
    <li id="list-item3">text 3</li>
    <li id="list-item4">text 4</li>
    <li id="list-item2">text 2</li>
    <li id="list-item1">text 1</li>
</ul>

Answer 1

Though there's probably an easier way to do this using a JS Library, here's a working solution using vanilla js.

var list = document.getElementById('mylist');

var items = list.childNodes;
var itemsArr = [];
for (var i in items) {
    if (items[i].nodeType == 1) { // get rid of the whitespace text nodes
        itemsArr.push(items[i]);
    }
}

itemsArr.sort(function(a, b) {
  return a.innerHTML == b.innerHTML
          ? 0
          : (a.innerHTML > b.innerHTML ? 1 : -1);
});

for (i = 0; i < itemsArr.length; ++i) {
  list.appendChild(itemsArr[i]);
}