Refactor highlight matched word in string

Question

I have following method which highlight matched word in text:

# Hightlight matched term
#
# Ex(for term: some):
#   "<span class="bold">Some</span> CEO Event"
#
def highlight_matched(matched_word, text)
  regex = matched_word.gsub(/\*|\"|\'/, "")
                       .split(" ")
                       .map { |s| "\\b#{s}" }.join('|')

  text.gsub(/(#{regex})/i, '<span class="bold">\1</span>')
end

Is there a better solution for that?

I am using it here:

"%s %s" %[highlight_matched(title[0..70]), content_tag(:span, caption, class: 'search-type')]

Answer 1

If text may contain HTML (in that case text is a somewhat misleading variable name) you definitely should use a HTML parser. What about this? (adding a <p> as wrapper, otherwise xpath won't find parent text nodes).

require 'nokogiri'

def highlight(html, word)
  Nokogiri::HTML::fragment("<p>" + html + "</p>").tap do |doc|
    doc.search('.//text()').each do |text_node|
      new_contents = text_node.text.gsub(/\b(#{word})\b/i, '<span class="bold">\1</span>')
      text_node.replace(new_contents)
    end
  end.xpath("p").inner_html
end

puts highlight('<p><a href="http://runner.com">Run Rabbit Run</a></p>', "run")
# <p><a href="http://runner.com"><span class="bold">Run</span>     
# Rabbit <span class="bold">Run</span></a></p>

Answer 2

You should use a better class name, such as highlighted or search-term or search-match.

Bug

Your solution will break anchors, or titles, or other hmtl properties:

# Yields: "Broken <a href='http://www.example.org/<span>cat</span>nip'>example</a>."
puts highlight_matched("cat", "Broken <a href='http://catnip.com'>example</a>.")

Another potential problem

And if you repeatedly run it on the same text with a list of words, you will get nested replacements if you don't have the words sorted by size-descending and replace a word ("cat") that is a substring of a previous replacement ("catnip").

This might be, or not, a problem.
For me it was, because I was replacing with anchors and HTML does not allow nested anchors.
For you it might be, too, depending on how you wish to style the matches.

intermediate = highlight_matched("catnip", "I love catnip!")
# Yields: "I love <span><span>cat</span>nip</span>!"
puts highlight_matched("cat", intermediate)