how to select table column by column header name with xpath

Question

I have a table of results and it looks like following:

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Id</th>
      <th>Type</th>
      <th>Amount</th>
      <th>Price</th>
      <th>Name</th>
      <th>Expiration</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>123</td>
      <td>Paper</td>
      <td>10 pcs.</td>
      <td>$10</td>
      <td>Premium Copier paper</td>
      <td>None</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>321</td>
      <td>Paper</td>
      <td>20 pcs.</td>
      <td>$20</td>
      <td>Extra Copier paper</td>
      <td>None</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>

And i want to select the whole column by its name with xpath e.g. i want the returned result to be an array of {<td>$10</td>, <td>$20</td>} if selected by column name "Price". I'm new to xpath and not really sure how to do this, but i'm pretty sure it's possible.

Answer 1

Ok, i've found the answer that would suffice and look quite elegant. Here goes the required XPath string:

//table/tbody/tr/td[count(//table/thead/tr/th[.="$columnName"]/preceding-sibling::th)+1]

Put a name of the column instead of $columnName. This works well for me. There's no XSL or anything, just pure xpath string. How to apply it - it's another question.