Highlighting Search Strings

silkspin

http://live.datatables.net/sehuviro/11/edit

I've noticed that string searches wrapped in quotes do actually work, but the highlighting breaks so you can't actually see where the results are at a glance.

For example sales as in the search input shows 3x Sales Assistant with the correct part highlighted. "sales as" still displays the same 3 results, but the highlighting disappears. Is there a quick fix for this? I have tried the latest versions of dataTables.searchHighlight.min.js and jquery.highlight.js.

kthorngren

This code is doing the highlighting:

function highlight( body, table )
{
    // Removing the old highlighting first
    body.unhighlight();

    // Don't highlight the "not found" row, so we get the rows using the api
    if ( table.rows( { filter: 'applied' } ).data().length ) {
        table.columns().every( function () {
                var column = this;
                column.nodes().flatten().to$().unhighlight({ className: 'column_highlight' });
                column.nodes().flatten().to$().highlight( $.trim( column.search() ).split(/\s+/), { className: 'column_highlight' } );
        } );
        body.highlight( $.trim( table.search() ).split(/\s+/) );
    }
}

On lines 11 and 13 the search string is trimmed ($treim()) then split at spaces. You can probably add replaceAll() to remove the spaces, something like this:

$.trim( table.search() ).replaceAll( '"', '').split(/\s+/)

Kevin

silkspin

Hi @kthorngren. I just tried that, but it didn't work. http://live.datatables.net/sehuviro/38/

I also tried .replace '"'/g, '') to globally replace the quotes and that didn't work either. Are you suggesting I replace the function because I don't know where the code in your example came from?

kthorngren

Sorry, the code I mentioned is in the dataTables.searchHighlight.js file. I copied the contents of this file into your test case and commented out the include link you had. Updated it with my suggestion and it seems to work.
http://live.datatables.net/sehuviro/39/edit

Kevin

silkspin

Thanks @kthorngren that does now allow quotes to highlight the text. There is a side-effect though. If you enter "sales s" it also highlights the single "s" too. That must be independent of the search function and how the highlight.js handles it. They behave in different ways so this might be more complex to fix.

kthorngren

If you enter "sales s" it also highlights the single "s" too

That has to do with the .split(/\s+/) which is splitting the string into individual words. You can check for leading and trailing quotes and if they exist then don't use the split method. Just remove the quotes.

Kevin

silkspin

I might've just fixed that problem by making body.highlight( $.trim( table.search() ).replaceAll('"', '').split(/\s+/) ); > body.highlight( $.trim( table.search() ).replaceAll('"', '') );

I'm not sure if that will have other side-effects but I'll do some testing and update later!

http://live.datatables.net/sehuviro/40/edit

silkspin

Our messages crossed @kthorngren !

Thanks for your help. I'll have a go at trying to do a conditional because I do need the spilt method too when quotes aren't used.

kthorngren

Good deal!

Kevin

silkspin

@kthorngren I've made a change to it and after testing it seems to work. If a search starts with a quote it doesn't show highlighted individual characters...

http://live.datatables.net/sehuviro/41/edit