Question

I have a table as shown below. Upon click on the edit I want to have the value of the first TD, i.e date, how can I do that, even with the second row?

    <table id="foo" border="1px">
<tr> 
                    <td rowspan='3' id="date"> 
                     Monday5                   </td> 
                    <td id="Name"> 
                     Jim 
                    <a href="#" class="edit"> 
                      edit 
                     </a> 

                    </td> 
  </tr> 

   <tr> 
                    <td id="Name"> 
                      Remy 
                    <a href="#" class="edit"> 
                      edit</a> 
                    </td> 
  </tr> 


</table>

Answer 1

first of all you should fix your html code, as the id attribute is unique. I suggest you use the class attribute:

<table id="foo" border="1">
    <tr> 
        <td rowspan="3" class="date">Monday</td> 
        <td>Cell A1 <a href="#" class="edit">edit</a></td> 
    </tr>
    <tr> 
        <td>Cell A2 <a href="#" class="edit">edit</a></td> 
    </tr>
    <tr> 
        <td>Cell A3 <a href="#" class="edit">edit</a></td> 
    </tr>
    <tr> 
        <td rowspan="3" class="date">Tuesday</td> 
        <td>Cell B1 <a href="#" class="edit">edit</a></td> 
    </tr>
    <tr> 
        <td>Cell B2 <a href="#" class="edit">edit</a></td> 
    </tr>
    <tr> 
        <td>Cell B3 <a href="#" class="edit">edit</a></td> 
    </tr>
</table>

in the javascript code, I first check if there’s a date in the current row, if not, get the first prev. row containing a date:

$("#foo a.edit").click(function(e){

    var tr = $(this).closest("tr"),
        date = tr.find("td.date");
    if (date.length == 0) {
        date = tr.prevAll(":has(td.date):first").find("td.date");
    }

    e.preventDefault();
    alert(date.html());
});

see a working demo at: http://jsfiddle.net/roberkules/WwZPY/

sidenote: i noticed that you used uppercase and lowercase names for classes. I suggest to be more consistent and name them always upper or lowercase. and css classes are case sensitive, so in order to eliminate another error source, be consistent.