Highlight search terms (select only leaf nodes)

Question

I would like to highlight search terms on a page, but not mess with any HTML tags. I was thinking of something like:

$(\'.searchResult *\').each(function()          


        

Answer 1

I've made a pure JavaScript version of this, and packaged it into a Google Chrome plug-in, which I wish to be helpful to some people. The core function is shown below:

GitHub Page for In-page Highlighter

function highlight(term){
    if(!term){
        return false;
    }

    //use treeWalker to find all text nodes that match selection
    //supported by Chrome(1.0+)
    //see more at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TreeWalker
    var treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker(
        document.body,
        NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT,
        null,
        false
        );
    var node = null;
    var matches = [];
    while(node = treeWalker.nextNode()){
        if(node.nodeType === 3 && node.data.indexOf(term) !== -1){
            matches.push(node);
        }
    }

    //deal with those matched text nodes
    for(var i=0; i<matches.length; i++){
        node = matches[i];
        //empty the parent node
        var parent = node.parentNode;
        if(!parent){
            parent = node;
            parent.nodeValue = '';
        }
        //prevent duplicate highlighting
        else if(parent.className == "highlight"){
            continue;
        }
        else{
            while(parent && parent.firstChild){
                parent.removeChild(parent.firstChild);
            }
        }

        //find every occurance using split function
        var parts = node.data.split(new RegExp('('+term+')'));
        for(var j=0; j<parts.length; j++){
            var part = parts[j];
            //continue if it's empty
            if(!part){
                continue;
            }
            //create new element node to wrap selection
            else if(part == term){
                var newNode = document.createElement("span");
                newNode.className = "highlight";
                newNode.innerText = part;
                parent.appendChild(newNode);
            }
            //create new text node to place remaining text
            else{
                var newTextNode = document.createTextNode(part);
                parent.appendChild(newTextNode);
            }
        }

    }
}