Auto-Highlight/Link Multiple Defined Words

zoomba

I'm currently working with a professor to help him redesign his course website using PHP (it's a complex site as it stands using javascript). One of the features he'd like to add is the ability to set a list of defined terms, and automatically hyperlink those terms every time they appear on any page in the site.

I'm a relative newb when it comes to anything more complex than "Hello World!" so I'm not sure how to approach this problem exactly.

The terms list could be hundreds of items long. Each time a term appears on a page, link html code is placed around it that opens up a pop-up showing the defintion for that specific term. There is no limit to how many terms may appear on a given page, and each instance of the same term would still be linked (i.e. if the term Linux appeared 5 times on a single page, each instance would still be linked.)

Any help would be appreciated.

-Mike

rehfeld

this can potentially get very complicated

will the "terms" always be single words, or could they be multiple words?

will you be needing to modify plain text, or existing html?

turning single words, that are just plain text into html links is very easy. but if there is existing html mixed in, it makes it a bit more complicated. then, if the terms might be more than 1 word long, the complexity escalates further.

in any case, your going to want to know at least the basics of regular expressions to accomplish this.