How can I search a table faster? - ruby

Question

I am trying to search a table for specific a specific value using Ruby and Selenium-webdriver. I have a method that works but takes a lot of time for some reason. It is a one row table and the page HTML looks like this:
<div id="permitGridContainer">
<table id="calendar" class="items" style="width:430px;" name="calendar">
<thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td id="avail1" class="status r slct" onmouseout="return nd();" onmouseover="return overlib("Available Quota<br>River Launches : 0 of 4");">
<div class="permitStatus">R</div>
</td>
<td id="avail2" class="status r" onmouseout="return nd();" onmouseover="return overlib("Available Quota<br>River Launches : 0 of 4");">
<div class="permitStatus">R</div>
</td>
<td id="avail3" class="status a" onmouseout="return nd();" onmouseover="return overlib("Available Quota<br>River Launches : 89 of 99");">
<a onclick="javascript:setNewArrivalDate("Sun Sep 06 2015", 2);return false;" href="#">
A
<br>
<small>89</small>
</a>
</td>
<td id="avail4" class="status a" onmouseout="return nd();" onmouseover="return overlib("Available Quota<br>River Launches : 97 of 99");">
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
... I shortened the table it has 14 columns.
I am looking for a column that has an Item available and I am checking the class for this, but the text also changes so there are other things I could look for.
This is the code I am using, but it visibly slow. I used puts statements to see the progress. My sense is that is has to do with time accessing the element. So I was hoping there is a better way to process the table quickly. Thank you.
for j in 1..days_to_check[i]
check_avail = driver.find_element(id: "avail#{j}")
check_availclass = check_avail.attribute ("class")
if check_availclass == "status a" or check_availclass == "status a slct"
#process if
end

Answer 1

Depending on your comment I would suggest to use the following xpath. I find this is often easier and feasible to use better xpath than looping though the html table
//td[(#class='status a') or (#class='status A')]
This xpath finds the class with status a or status A