Javascript get the text value of a column from a particular row of an html table

Question

A user clicks on a row of a table, and I want to get (in Javascript) the innerhtml of let's say the 3rd column of that row.

Something like :

document.getElementById("tblBlah").rows[i].columns[j].innerHTML

doesn't seem achievable and I can't find anything here or in the net.

Any solutions would be very much appreciated ( NO jQuery )

Answer 1

document.getElementById("tblBlah").rows[i].columns[j].innerHTML;

Should be:

document.getElementById("tblBlah").rows[i].cells[j].innerHTML;

But I get the distinct impression that the row/cell you need is the one clicked by the user. If so, the simplest way to achieve this would be attaching an event to the cells in your table:

function alertInnerHTML(e)
{
    e = e || window.event;//IE
    alert(this.innerHTML);
}

var theTbl = document.getElementById('tblBlah');
for(var i=0;i<theTbl.length;i++)
{
    for(var j=0;j<theTbl.rows[i].cells.length;j++)
    {
        theTbl.rows[i].cells[j].onclick = alertInnerHTML;
    }
}

That makes all table cells clickable, and alert it's innerHTML. The event object will be passed to the alertInnerHTML function, in which the this object will be a reference to the cell that was clicked. The event object offers you tons of neat tricks on how you want the click event to behave if, say, there's a link in the cell that was clicked, but I suggest checking the MDN and MSDN (for the window.event object)