How can I find each table cell's “visual location” using jQuery?

Question

I have a HTML table that contains both ROWSPANs and COLSPANs.

How can I find each cell\'s \"visual location\" using jQuery?

For example, here\'s a visual rep

Answer 1

for this specific layout (i.e. if your first row doesn't have colspan and more or less uniform cell borders) you may do it this way:

function getCellLocation(cell)
{
    var row_number = cell.parentNode.rowIndex;
    var col_number = "";
    $(cell).parents('table').find('tr:first th').each( function()
    {
        if (cell.offsetLeft >= this.offsetLeft)
        {
            col_number = $(this).text();
        }
        else return false;
    });
    return col_number + row_number;
}

if you want numeric column change it to

var col_number = 0;
    ...
if (cell.offsetLeft >= this.offsetLeft)
{
    col_number++;
}