Highlight Specific Words in Text with jQuery

Identifying particular words within a block of text for emphasis can be a common task. One technique is to highlight these words using HTML span elements that add visual styling. This article explores how to achieve this using the jQuery library.

jQuery-Based Solution:

/*
 * jQuery Highlight plugin
 *
 * Based on highlight v3 by Johann Burkard
 * http://johannburkard.de/blog/programming/javascript/highlight-javascript-text-higlighting-jquery-plugin.html
 *
 * Code a little bit refactored and cleaned (in my humble opinion).
 * Most important changes:
 *  - has an option to highlight only entire words (wordsOnly - false by default),
 *  - has an option to be case sensitive (caseSensitive - false by default)
 *  - highlight element tag and class names can be specified in options
 *
 * Usage:
 *   // wrap every occurrance of text 'lorem' in content
 *   // with <span class='highlight'> (default options)
 *   $('#content').highlight('lorem');
 *
 *   // search for and highlight more terms at once
 *   // so you can save some time on traversing DOM
 *   $('#content').highlight(['lorem', 'ipsum']);
 *   $('#content').highlight('lorem ipsum');
 *
 *   // search only for entire word 'lorem'
 *   $('#content').highlight('lorem', { wordsOnly: true });
 *
 *   // don't ignore case during search of term 'lorem'
 *   $('#content').highlight('lorem', { caseSensitive: true });
 *
 *   // wrap every occurrance of term 'ipsum' in content
 *   // with <em class='important'>
 *   $('#content').highlight('ipsum', { element: 'em', className: 'important' });
 *
 *   // remove default highlight
 *   $('#content').unhighlight();
 *
 *   // remove custom highlight
 *   $('#content').unhighlight({ element: 'em', className: 'important' });
 *
 *
 * Copyright (c) 2009 Bartek Szopka
 *
 * Licensed under MIT license.
 *
 */

jQuery.extend({
    highlight: function (node, re, nodeName, className) {
        if (node.nodeType === 3) {
            var match = node.data.match(re);
            if (match) {
                var highlight = document.createElement(nodeName || 'span');
                highlight.className = className || 'highlight';
                var wordNode = node.splitText(match.index);
                wordNode.splitText(match[0].length);
                var wordClone = wordNode.cloneNode(true);
                highlight.appendChild(wordClone);
                wordNode.parentNode.replaceChild(highlight, wordNode);
                return 1; //skip added node in parent
            }
        } else if ((node.nodeType === 1 &amp;&amp; node.childNodes) &amp;&amp; // only element nodes that have children
                !/(script|style)/i.test(node.tagName) &amp;&amp; // ignore script and style nodes
                !(node.tagName === nodeName.toUpperCase() &amp;&amp; node.className === className)) { // skip if already highlighted
            for (var i = 0; i < node.childNodes.length; i++) {
                i += jQuery.highlight(node.childNodes[i], re, nodeName, className);
            }
        }
        return 0;
    }
});

jQuery.fn.unhighlight = function (options) {
    var settings = { className: 'highlight', element: 'span' };
    jQuery.extend(settings, options);

    return this.find(settings.element + &quot;.&quot; + settings.className).each(function () {
        var parent = this.parentNode;
        parent.replaceChild(this.firstChild, this);
        parent.normalize();
    }).end();
};

jQuery.fn.highlight = function (words, options) {
    var settings = { className: 'highlight', element: 'span', caseSensitive: false, wordsOnly: false };
    jQuery.extend(settings, options);

    if (words.constructor === String) {
        words = [words];
    }
    words = jQuery.grep(words, function(word, i){
      return word != '';
    });
    words = jQuery.map(words, function(word, i) {
      return word.replace(/[-[\]{}()*+?.,\^$|#\s]/g, &quot;\$&amp;&quot;);
    });
    if (words.length == 0) { return this; };

    var flag = settings.caseSensitive ? &quot;&quot; : &quot;i&quot;;
    var pattern = &quot;(&quot; + words.join(&quot;|&quot;) + &quot;)&quot;;
    if (settings.wordsOnly) {
        pattern = &quot;\b&quot; + pattern + &quot;\b&quot;;
    }
    var re = new RegExp(pattern, flag);

    return this.each(function () {
        jQuery.highlight(this, re, settings.element, settings.className);
    });
};

Usage:

// Highlight 'dolor' with default span style
$('#content').highlight('dolor');

// Highlight 'lorem' and 'ipsum'
$('#content').highlight(['lorem', 'ipsum']);

// Highlight only full word 'dolor'
$('#content').highlight('dolor', { wordsOnly: true });

// Custom styling for 'ipsum'
$('#content').highlight('ipsum', { element: 'em', className: 'important' });

// Remove any highlighted text
$('#content').unhighlight();

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