Cant get text of a TD by index - watir-webdriver

Question

I have the fallowing code :
<table id="table1" class="class1">
<thead>...<thead>
<tbody>
<tr id="1">
<td class>cell1</td>
<td class>cell2</td>
<td class>cell3</td>
<td class>cell4</td>
</tr>
<tr id="2">
....
<\tr>
...
I need to go over all the rows and check if cell number 3 has "cell3" as text . (for starters)
then after ive found it i need to keep checking the rows for a different string in cell number 3
I've tried:
string="cell3"
rows=browser.table.rows
rows.each {|tr|
if tr.td( :index =>2).text ==string
puts " Found #{string}"
string="cellK"
end
}
Im doing it in a loop since there are several strings i need to find.
But im getting the fallowing error :
unable to locate element, using {:index=>2, :tag_name=>"td"}
Any advice ?
How can i get the text of a td?
and why cant i find td by index ?

Answer 1

I am guessing that the problem is the header row in the thead. The table head is probably something like:
<thead>
<tr id="0">
<th class>heading1</th>
<th class>heading2</th>
<th class>heading3</th>
<th class>heading4</th>
</tr>
<thead>
Notice that there is a tr. table.rows will therefore include the header row. Also notice that it is using th instead of td cells. It is likely here that watir cannot find the td with index 2, because there are no tds at all in this row.
Assuming this is the problem, you have a couple solutions.
Solution 1 - Make th and td equivalent by using cells
Inside the loop, use cell instead of td:
rows.each {|tr|
if tr.cell( :index =>2).text == string #Note the change here
puts " Found #{string}"
string="cellK"
end
}
Table#cell matches td and th cells. This means that cell(:index, 2) would match the 3rd td or th in the row. When watir checks the header row, it will now find a value.
Solution 2 - Ignore the thead
When getting the rows to check, confine the rows collection to only include rows in the tbody:
rows = browser.table.tbody.rows
This would then ignore the riws in the thead that are causing the problem.