Question

using jquery I need to retrieve an array from table cells, format the data and pass it into a js function.

the code i am using is this:

 var l1 = new Array();
   $('table#datatable tbody td:first-child').each(function() {
   l1.push($(this).text());
   });

this is the table fragment

  <tr>
               <th scope="row">Age: 0-4</th>
               <td>0</td>
               <td>9.7</td>
           </tr>
           <tr>
               <th scope="row">5-17</th>
               <td>23.6</td>
               <td>18.0</td>
           </tr>
           <tr>
               <th scope="row">Total 0-17</th>
               <td>20.6</td>
               <td>16.1</td>
           </tr>

the table’s id is “datatable”. i want to return an array of the contents of each first td and then format it like this:
0,23.6,20.6

i am very new to using arrays…

Answer 1

You can do this:

var l1 = $('#datatable td:nth-child(2)').map(function() {
  return $(this).text();
}).get();
//l1 = [0, 23.6, 20.6]

See here for a demo

This uses .map() to get an array from the elements. Your main problem is that :first-child needs to be the first child of the parent, it doesn’t mean the “first child of this type”, so only a <th> would be :first-child in your code. Instead you need the 2nd child, or :nth-child(2) to get the first <td> element.