I wanted to make a quick table of contents plugin for jQuery which can automatically generate a well formatted contents section for long pieces of text, which use the header tags smartly.
Call the tableofcontents() function on the selector you wish to be filled with the table.
There are a few arguments you can pass through to the function to make it better suited for your needs:
scope (default: 'body')
This defines where you want the table to be populated from. Usually "body" is a bad choice, so you may want to switch this to "#content", or "article". It's just another jQuery selector.
header_tags (default: ['h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', 'h6'])
This is an array of tags which you'd like to be considered as new sections of your content. If your content starts at a 'h2', you may want to redefine this without the h1.
list_type (default: 'ul')
What should the list type of the table be? Depends on how you want to present the table.
exclude (default: [])
A list of DOM elements, or a jQuery collection, of elements you want to ignore whilst creating the table.
empty (default: true)
Should the div that the will hold the Table of Contents be emptied before adding the content?