Question

I am using this class to highlight the search keywords on a piece of text:

    class highlight
    {
        public $output_text;

        function __construct($text, $words)
        {
            $split_words = explode( " " , $words );
            foreach ($split_words as $word)
            {
                $text = preg_replace("|($word)|Ui" ,
                           "<font style=\"background-color:yellow;\"><b>$1</b></font>" , $text );
            }
            $this->output_text = $text;
        }
    }

If
$text = “Khalil, M., Paas, F., Johnson, T.E., Su, Y.K., and Payer, A.F. (2008.) Effects of Instructional Strategies Using Cross Sections on the Recognition of Anatomical Structures in Correlated CT and MR Images. <i>Anatomical Sciences Education, 1(2)</i>, 75-83 “

which already contains HTML tags, and some of my search keywords are

$words = “Effects color”

The first look will highlight the word Effects, with <font style="background-color:yellow">Effect</font>, but the second loop will highlight the word color in the HTML tag. What should I do?

Is it possible to tell preg_replace to only highlight text when its not inside an alligator bracket?

Answer 1

Use a HTML parser to make sure that you only search through text.