Question

How do I determine the index number of the element which text label matches to the one clicked?

I have a list:

<ul>
  <li data-cont="item one">this is one</li>
  <li data-cont="item 2">this is second</li>
  <li data-cont="one more">this is another one</li>
</ul>

...

<div>item one</div>

<div>item 2</div>

<div>one more</div>

When one of LIs is clicked my screen needs to scroll down to one of the matched DIVs later on the page.

$('#li').click(function(){
    var scrollNow = $(this).attr('data-cont');
    $('html, body').animate({
        scrollTop: $( 

        // here I need to scroll down to the item by index...

        ).offset().top
    }, 500);
});

Answer 1

Getting the index of the div is easy :

var index = $('div').filter(function(){
   return $(this).text().trim()==scrollNow}
).index();

(I don’t use :contains as it could match too many div)

But I fail to see why you want this index.

If you want to scroll to the div, you just need to do

var div = $('div').filter(function(){
   return $(this).text().trim()==scrollNow}
);
$('html, body').animate({
    scrollTop: div.offset().top
}, 500);