Highlight search results script

lukeurtnowski

I have a search function in my site (php/mysql). I'm trying to figure out a way to have it highlight the exact string that the user entered inside each of the search results. So if the search was for bo which lets say returned the result workbook, every occurence of bo would be highlighted (the bo in workbook). Do you know how this would be done?

BuzzLY

Are you using CSS? If not, I suggest you do. Create a CSS definition called "highlight," with a background color of yellow. Then, go through the search results and replace each instance of the search pattern with "<span class="highlight">[search term]</span>

That's how I would do it, anyway. Let us know if that helps!

lukeurtnowski

sounds good, ill try that🙂

Morrigan

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php
Scroll down to dave at [nospam]netready dot biz's post, he has a very neat highlighting function that even keeps the right letter case. 🙂

ze_lee

OK, here is a quick example of how to highlight search results KEEPING CASE. (I.e., user searches for "WEB" highlight "Web" and "web" and do not change the case of the results....)

Keeping case is one of those weird, undocumented (or hard to find documented) things. I've run into this issue with PHP, Perl and Cold Fusion. Always a strain to find the correct string to replace without changing case.

That said - assume user is searching ($keyword); replace text in the title ($r_title) and description ($r_description) of results. I've used hard-coded color values here for clarity; a better way is to wrapt the result in a class - but note the key part: "\0" in the regular expression is key to keeping the case:


// And now let's do a search and replace to highlight the keyword(s)
if ($keyword) {
	$r_title[$j] = eregi_replace($keyword, "<span style=background-color:#99CCFF;>\\0</span>", $r_title[$j]);
	$r_description[$j] = eregi_replace($keyword, "<span style=background-color:#99CCFF;>\\0</span>", $r_description[$j]);
	}
}

You can build a function to do this (so you can more quickly/cleanly highlight text in many areas with simple function call; this code is the basic basis of such a function.

Enjoy!