jQuery highlighting selected columns only in a table

Question

I see this post on highlighting even columns but can I highlight only selected columns?

Here is the code they use:

$("table.Table22 > tbody > tr > td:nth-child(even)").css("background","blue");

But I would like: NOTE: the class="highlight" will be on the selected columns, so if I selected column 3 the class="highlight" would be removed from column 2 and added to column 3. jQuery needs to add the class based on selected column.

<table class="tbl">
    <tr>
        <th class="firstColumn">
            Cell 1:Heading
        </th>
        <th class="highlight">
            Selected column so this should be highlighted
        </th>
        <th>
            Cell 3:Heading
        </th>
        <th>
            Cell 4:Heading
        </th>
        <th>
            Cell 5:Heading
        </th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>
            Cell 1:Row 1
        </td>
        <td class="highlight">
            Selected column so this should be highlighted
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 3:Row 1
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 4:Row 1
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 5:Row 1
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>
            Cell 1:Row 2
        </td>
        <td class="highlight">
            Selected column so this should be highlighted
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 3:Row 2
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 4:Row 2
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 5:Row 2
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at jQuery tableHover plugin to achieve this. Then use something like this

$('table.tbl').tableHover({
    colClass: 'hover', 
    clickClass: 'click', 
    headCols: true, 
    footCols: true 
}); 

EDIT:

Something like this?

Working Demo - Click on any cell, to highlight the column

Code from demo -

$(function() {
  var rows = $('table.tbl tr');  

  rows.children().click(function() {

    rows.children().removeClass('highlight');  
    var index = $(this).prevAll().length;  
    rows.find(':nth-child(' + (index + 1) + ')').addClass('highlight');

  });
});

Answer 2

have you concidered using colgroups instead of adding classes to every cell?

i only recently started to see the power of colgroups myself, and they work like this:

.highlight {
    background-color: yellow; 
 }

     <table id="myTable">
    	   
    	       <colgroup class="highlight"></colgroup>
    	       <colgroup></colgroup>
    	       <colgroup></colgroup>
    	       <colgroup></colgroup>
    	       <colgroup></colgroup>
    	   
    	    <thead>
    	       <tr>
    	           <th>header1</th>
    	           <th>header2</th>
    	           <th>header3</th>
    	           <th>header4</th>
    	           <th>header5</th>
    	       </tr>
    	    </thead>
    	    <tbody>
    	       <tr>
    	           <td>cell a</td>
    	           <td>cell b</td>
    	           <td>cell c</td>
    	           <td>cell d</td>
    	           <td>cell e</td>
    	       </tr>
        	<tbody>
     <table>

this would render a table with 5 columns, where 1 column has css class to highlight the first col. so actually the only thing you have to do then, add a function to the hover of each cell, to just add the highlighting class to the corresponding colgroup.

there is a complete videoguide you can find right here:table fix header, and row + column highlighting.

*EDITED the answer because it was irrelevant, i read the question wrong, and answered to a totally different matter. (added a correct reply now)

Answer 3

Here's what I use for adding a cross-hair affect to my table:

$('tbody td').hover(function() {
    $(this).closest('tr').find('td,th').addClass('highlight');
    var col = $(this).index()+1;
    $(this).closest('table').find('tr :nth-child('+col+')').addClass('highlight');
}, function() {
    $(this).closest('tr').find('td,th').removeClass('highlight');
    var col = $(this).index()+1;
    $(this).closest('table').find('tr :nth-child('+col+')').removeClass('highlight');
});

Seems to run a bit slow on large tables though (the highlighting lags behind).