[PHP][MySQL] How to get an excerpt from a paragraph, bolding search word?

NeXEA

Alright, this is somewhat of an AJAX search that I am using for my site.

The Search Form

<html>
<head>
<script src="selectuser.js"></script>
</head>
<body>

<form> 
Select a User:
<input name="users" onkeyup="showUser(this.value)" value="Search">
</form>

<p>
<div id="txtHint"><b>User info will be listed here.</b></div>
</p>

</body>
</html>

and the JavaScript

var xmlHttp

function showUser(str)
{ 
xmlHttp=GetXmlHttpObject()
if (xmlHttp==null)
 {
 alert ("Browser does not support HTTP Request")
 return
 }
var url="getuser.php"
url=url+"?q="+str
url=url+"&sid="+Math.random()
xmlHttp.onreadystatechange=stateChanged 
xmlHttp.open("GET",url,true)
xmlHttp.send(null)
}

function stateChanged() 
{ 
if (xmlHttp.readyState==4 || xmlHttp.readyState=="complete")
 { 
 document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML=xmlHttp.responseText 
 } 
}

function GetXmlHttpObject()
{
var xmlHttp=null;
try
 {
 // Firefox, Opera 8.0+, Safari
 xmlHttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
 }
catch (e)
 {
 //Internet Explorer
 try
  {
  xmlHttp=new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
  }
 catch (e)
  {
  xmlHttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  }
 }
return xmlHttp;
}

the getuser.php

<?php
$q=$_GET["q"];

$con = mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', 'NeXEA);
if (!$con)
 {
 die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
 }

mysql_select_db("tylerper_wordpress", $con) or die(mysql_error());

$sql="SELECT * FROM perroux_posts WHERE post_content LIKE '%".$q."%' OR post_title LIKE '%".$q."%' AND post_type != 'page'";

$result = mysql_query($sql, $con) or die(mysql_error());
echo $sql;
echo "<table border='1'>
<tr>
<th>Title</th>
<th>Article</th>
</tr>";

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
 {
 echo "<tr>";
 echo "<td>" . $row['post_title'] . "</td>";
 echo "<td>" . $row['post_content'] . "</td>";
 echo "</tr>";
 }
echo "</table>";

mysql_close($con);
?>

What I am wondering is how could I fix the output to be like how it would be in a google search. Showing 10-15 words between the instances of the word(s) and/or bolding the word where it exists in the excerpt.

Any help is much appreciated

-NeXEA

jlodell

this can be done with str_replace or preg_replace. It also depends on what you want highlighted(individual words or entire search string). I personally use a more OOP approach but for simplicity just create a function and pass it the search string and the content you want to highlight.

function highlightTerms($content,$terms){
// if you want the entire search string??
$content = str_ireplace($terms,"<strong>$terms</strong>",$content);
// if you want all the individual words highlighted
foreach(explode(' ',$terms) as $term){
$content = str_ireplace($term,"<strong>$term</strong>",$content);
}
return $content;
}

then where you are outputting the $row['post_content'] just wrap it in a function call, like highlightTerms($row['post_content'],$q)...
Look at http://php.net/str_ireplace as they have a couple of examples.

justin