Extract Table Text

The following recursive function can be used to extract text from any HTML element including a table.

var cnts= '';
function getElementText(el){
 var cn=el.childNodes,i;
 if(el.nodeType==3){
     cnts += (el.nodeValue + "\n");
 }
 for(i=0;i<cn.length;++i)
   getElementText(cn[i]);
}

The function accepts an HTML object as a parameter. First it checks for the nodeType property of the DOM element. If the nodeType value is 3 (TEXT_NODE) the function grabs the element text (nodeValue) and appends it to the global variable cnts. As the final step the function calls itself supplying each element child as the parameter.  The only downside I see is using a global variable to hold the element contents. But so far I don't see any other way to achieve the same functionality.

An interesting article about anonymous recursive functions can be found here.

Another post you might find interesting:  Hide Columns in a Table