Question

I folks, I have following javascript function, which should check for the index of a column in a table. The problem is the comparison of the columnName and the name from the table.
I have tested with columnName ‘ID’ and this column is found in the table, but the comparison is not true, so that the index is not returned.

My code:

function getColumnIndex(columnName, grid) {
    console.log("loading column index for column: [" + columnName + "]");
    $('div.hDivBox > table > thead > tr > th', grid).each(function(index) {
         var name = $(this).attr('title');
         console.log("Checking cell: [" + name + "]");
         if (String(name) == columnName) {
              return index;
         }
    });
    console.log("no cell found with name: " + columnName);
    return -1;
} 

The log statements:

loading column index for column: [ID]
Checking cell: [ID]
Checking cell: [Name]
Checking cell: [Description]
Checking cell: [AddTime]
Checking cell: [UpdTime]
no cell found with name: ID

An example of the HTML, which is analyzed by the javascript function:

<div class="hDivBox">
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th align="center" hidden="" axis="col0" title="ID" style="display: none;">
                <div style="text-align: center; width: 30px;">ID</div>
            </th>
            <th align="center" axis="col1" title="Name" class="">
                <div style="text-align: center; width: 250px;">Name</div>
            </th>
            <th align="center" axis="col2" title="Description" class="">
                <div style="text-align: center; width: 250px;">Beschreibung</div>
            </th>
            <th align="center" axis="col3" title="AddTime">
                <div style="text-align: center; width: 120px;">hinzugefügt</div>
            </th>
            <th align="center" axis="col4" title="UpdTime">
                <div style="text-align: center; width: 120px;">aktualisiert</div>
            </th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
</table>

Answer 1

Just use a jQuery attribute selector to match the title and use index() instead of looping yourself.

function getIndexByTitle( title ) {
 return $('th[title="' + title + '"]').index();
}

alert(getIndexByTitle("ID"));
alert(getIndexByTitle("Name"));

Example