accessing table cells from puppeteer - puppeteer

Question

I need to be able to validate the values in specific table cells, and later, to click on a particular cell that holds a link. I get that Node and the browser (or emulator) are two different process spaces, so I can't pass references. I was hoping that puppeteer would hide this fact in a read-only manner such as return someArray; in a function run in the browser context being "magically" replicated by puppeteer on the Node side, but alas.
test("get a certain row from a certain table", async function getRow() {
await page.waitForSelector("#actionItemsView-table");
const
cellText = await page.evaluate(function getCells() {
const
row = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("#actionItemsView-table tbody tr"));
for (let i = row.length - 1; i >= 0; --i) {
// the row we want is the one that has text of interest in cells[2]
if (row[i].cells[2] === "some text that identifies the row of interest") {
return row[i]; // we can't pass this back to Node, so this is wrong
// but some version of this what we need to do
}
}
return null; // no such row
});
console.log(cellText); // cellText is an empty array
}, testTimeout);
Lacking that, I have run through various intermediate experiments, all the way to this, seemingly simplest case, just to get something that works and then work my way back up to what I need, but this doesn't work either:
test("get the text from a single cell", async function getInnerText() {
await page.waitForSelector("#actionItemsView-table");
const
cellText = await page.evaluate(function getText() {
let
ct,
row = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("#actionItemsView-table tbody tr"));
for (let i = row.length - 1; i >= 0; --i) {
if (row[i].cells[2] === "some text that identifies the row of interest") {
ct = row[i].cells[3].innerText; // the text of the next cell to the right
break;
}
}
return ct; // ct is not a string!
});
console.log(cellText); // cellText is undefined!
}, testTimeout);
If I do things like
document.querySelect("#actionItemsView-table").rows[2].cells[3].innerText
they work, so my selectors and javascript syntax seems to be correct.
There has to be a way to do this and it has to be way easier than I have made it -- what am I missing? Why is the above not working but something like this does work:
await page.$eval("input[name=emailAddr]", function setId(el, id) { el.value = id; return id; }, id);

Answer 1

Here's an easier way to find that cell:
await page.evaluate(() => {
let td = [...document.querySelectorAll("td")].find(td => td.innerText === "something")
return td?.nextElementSibling?.innerText
})
This will return the text or undefined