Sort Unordered List With Javascript

I have been looking at the stackoverflow thread: How may I sort a list alphabetically using jQuery? but for my scenario, I have the hierachy:

• rough solution - essentially blowing away the existing HTML and replacing it in raw text mode with other HTML. We can do better by actually shuffling the DOM elements around:

  function sort(list, key) {
      $($(list).get().reverse()).each(function(outer) {
          var sorting = this;
          $($(list).get().reverse()).each(function(inner) {
              if($(key, this).text().localeCompare($(key, sorting).text()) > 0) {
                  this.parentNode.insertBefore(sorting.parentNode.removeChild(sorting), this);
              }
          });
      });
  }
  

  To use it, we pass in a selector to the list and a selector to use to locate the key we want to sort on:

  <ul class="toBeSorted">
      <li><a href="...">sort me</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <script type="text/javascript">
      sort('ul.toBeSorted>li', 'a');
  
      //we want to sort the <li>'s in ul.toBeSorted;
      //and we want to use the text of the first and only <a>
      //in each item as the sort key
  </script>