21
Jun
Search Query Term Highlighter - HttpModule for ASP.NET
Sometimes I find it useful when, as I'm searching, result documents are presented with my search terms highlighted. Like they do in Google's cache.
So I decided to write an HttpModule to handle the highlighting. I also thought it would be useful to log these terms. This module can serve that purpose quite nicely with a little modification.
I found an open source solution so I adapted it. I ported most of the regular expressions and some of the logic from SEHL, the search engine query terms highlighter for PHP.
Download: Search Term Highlighter HttpModule for ASP.NET
To use this HttpModule in any ASP.NET web site, place the class file in your App_Code folder and add this to web.config in the system.web section:
<httpModules> <add type="SearchTermHighlighterModule" name="SearchTermHighlighterModule"/> </httpModules>
The HTML source it produces looks like this:
<span class="highlight-search-query">Ishmael</span>
So you'll need to include the style definition in your stylesheet:
.highlight-search-query { background-color:Lime; }
to get this( searching for [ishmael "some years ago" the] ):
One item left on my TODO list is to use multiple CSS classes, so that each term can have it's own color.