Hide and show columns in an HTML table

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I've tried to Google, but there's no library that has an API to toggle table columns when clicked elsewhere on the page, so I've decided to do this:

function deleteColumnOnClick() {

    $('.hide div').click(function() {
        var index = $(this).index();
        $('table thead th').eq(index).toggleClass('hidden');
        var hidden = $('table thead th.hidden')
        $.each(hidden, function() {
            var idx = $(this).index();
            $.each($('table tbody tr'), function() {
                $(this).find('td').eq(idx).hide();
            });
        });

        var visible = $('table thead th:not(.hidden)');
        $.each(visible, function() {
            var idx = $(this).index();
            $.each($('table tbody tr'), function() {
                $(this).find('td').eq(idx).show();
            });                    
        });
    });
}

deleteColumnOnClick();

Is this an awful solution? If yes, how do I refactor it?

Right now, the relationship between the hide/show "buttons" and the columns is pretty fragile. You're dependent on the buttons being in the same exact order as the columns. If you add or remove a button, the indices stop making sense; you can't rely on the 3rd button always being linked to the 3rd column and vice versa.

I'd suggest giving the buttons (or whatever element you use to hide/show columns) a data-column attribute or something similar to make it explicit that this button controls that column. Similarly, the th cells can carry a data-column attribute or simply an ID to identify them.

For instance:

Hide/show

  
    
      A column
      Another column
      Yet another column
    
  
  ...

Now it's explicit that the button will hide column #column-abc. And it'll simplify the code too, since relationships between things are no longer just assumed or implied.

Secondly, you're (in a sense) trying to both hide and show the column, and just seeing what works. It'd be simpler to just do a hasClass("hidden") check. There are also some jQuery selector magic you can use.

Something like this, for instance:

// global click handler for any element with a "data-column" attribute
$("[data-column]").on("click", function () {
  var button = $(this),                   // the element that was clicked
      header = $(button.data("column")),  // the cell referenced by the button
      table = header.closest("table"),    // the table in which the cell resides
      index = header.index() + 1,         // convert to CSS's 1-based indexing
      selector = "tbody tr td:nth-child(" + index + ")",  // selector for all body cells in the column 
      column = table.find(selector).add(header); // all cells in the column

  // toggle the "hidden" class on all the column cells
  column.toggleClass("hidden");
});

Here's a demo

StackExchange Code Review Q#83839, answer score: 9