How to extract data into associative array from HTML table using jQuery?

Question

Suppose I have HTML like this,

<table id="Words">
<tr>
    <td class="cell">Hello</td>
    <td class="desc">A word</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td class="cell">Bye</td>
    <td class="desc">A word</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td class="cell">Tricicle</td>
    <td class="desc">A toy</td>
</tr>

Is there any elegant way/function to convert this to Javascript associative array? How to go about it?

Answer 1

$('tr').map(function(){
    return {
        cell: $('.cell', this).text(),
        desc: $('.desc', this).text()
    }
})

---

jQuery(Object { cell="Hello", desc="A word"}, Object { cell="Bye", desc="A word"}, Object { cell="Tricicle", desc="A toy"})

Answer 2

http://jsfiddle.net/cyFW5/ - here and it will works for every td with a class

$(function() {

    var arr = [],
        tmp;

    $('#Words tr').each(function() {

        tmp = {};

        $(this).children().each(function() {

            if ($(this).attr('class')) {
                tmp[$(this).attr('class')] = $(this).text();
            }

        });

        arr.push(tmp);
    });

    console.log(arr);

});​

Answer 3

var table = [];
$('table tr').each(function() {
    var row = [];
    $(this).find('td').each(function() {
        var cell = {};
        cell[$(this).attr('class')] = $(this).html();
        row.push(cell);
    });
    table.push(row);
});

Answer 4

Here's a demo , watch the console.

$(function() {

    var words = [];

    $('#Words tr').each(function() {
        words.push({
            cell: $('.cell', this).text(),
            desc: $('.desc', this).text()
        });
    });

    console.log(words);

});​

Answer 5

Given this specific use case then this would work:

var results = {};
$('table#Words tr').each(function(i, x){
    results[i] = {
      desc: $(x).find('.desc').text(),
      cell: $(x).find('.cell').text()
    }
});

But why have the whole conversion to an object? What's it being used for, there might be an easier method of walking through the data.