Question

I wrote a little search script for a client, it works and words get highlited, BUT…

Imagine this situation:

search term: test

found result: Hello this <a href="/news/this-is-a-test">is a test</a>

In this example both ‘test’ in the href part and between the <a> tags get highlited, breaking the link.

How could I prevent this?

Edit:

So this is what I need: A regex replace function that replaces all matched search strings EXCEPT the ones that are located inside a href attribute

Answer 1

Got it!

$body = $row['body'];
$pattern = "/".$search_string."(?!([^<]+)?>)/i";
$replacement = "<strong class='highlite'>".$search_string."</strong>";
$altered_body = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $body);

print($altered_body);