How to get a table cell value using jquery?

Question

I am trying to work out how to get the value of table cell for each row using jquery.

My table looks like this...

<table id="mytable">
<tr><th>Customer Id</th><th>Result</th></tr>
<tr><td>123</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>456</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>789</td><td></td></tr>
</table>

I basicly want to loop though the table, and get the value of the "Customer Id" column for each row.

In the code below I have worked out that i need to do this to get it looping though each row, customer not sure how to get the value of of the first cell in the row.

$('#mytable tr').each(function() {

    var cutomerId = 

}

Many Thanks!

Answer 1

$('#mytable tr').each(function() {
  // need this to skip the first row
  if ($(this).find("td:first").legth > 0) {
    var cutomerId = $(this).find("td:first").html();
  }
});

Answer 2

$('#mytable tr').each(function() {
    var customerId = $(this).find("td:first").html();    
}

What you are doing is iterating through all the trs in the table, finding the first td in the current tr in the loop, and extracting its inner html.

To select a particular cell, you can reference them with an index:

$('#mytable tr').each(function() {
    var customerId = $(this).find("td").eq(2).html();    
}

In the above code, I will be retrieving the value of the third row (the index is zero-based, so the first cell index would be 0)

---

Here's how you can do it without jQuery:

var table = document.getElementById('mytable'), 
    rows = table.getElementsByTagName('tr'),
    i, j, cells, customerId;

for (i = 0, j = rows.length; i < j; ++i) {
    cells = rows[i].getElementsByTagName('td');
    if (!cells.length) {
        continue;
    }
    customerId = cells[0].innerHTML;
}

​

Answer 3

a less-jquerish approach:

$('#mytable tr').each(function() {
    if (!this.rowIndex) return; // skip first row
    var customerId = this.cells[0].innerHTML;
});

this can obviously be changed to work with not-the-first cells.

Answer 4

If you can, it might be worth using a class attribute on the TD containing the customer ID so you can write:

$('#mytable tr').each(function() {
    var customerId = $(this).find(".customerIDCell").html();    
 }

Essentially this is the same as the other solutions (possibly because I copypasted), but has the advantage that you won't need to change the structure of your code if you move around the columns, or even put the customer ID into a < span >, provided you keep the class attribute with it.

By the way, I think you could do it in one selector:

$('#mytable .customerIDCell').each(function()
{
  alert($(this).html());
});

If that makes things easier

Answer 5

How would I select other columns other than the first?

e.g. If I want to update the text in the "Result" column what selector should I use?

Answer 6

Y not you use id for that column? say that:

    <table width="300" border="1">
          <tr>
            <td>first</td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td>second</td>
          </tr> 
          <tr>
            <td>blah blah</td>
            <td>blah blah</td>
            <td id="result">Where the result should occur</td>
          </tr>
    </table>


<script type="text/javascript">
        $('#result').html("The result is....");
</script>