Web Site Cookbook

6.6. Highlighting the Search Term

Problem

You want to make it clear to site visitors what they searched for when they view a results page.

Solution

Combine a stylesheet rule with a PHP text-processing function to make the search term stand out.

For this Recipe, let's assume you have a search form that queries a database for articles, like this:

	<form action="/search/search.php" method="post">
	<input name="arg" type="text" value="" size="10" maxlength="20">
	<input type="submit" value="Go">
	</form>

The value of the <input> field arg gets passed to the search.php script and becomes the variable $arg. First, add a rule to your stylesheet that will highlight this block of text, as shown in Figure 6-3:

	.arg {
	    background-color: #00CCCC;
	    font-weight: bold;
	}

Then add a line to the results page that simply prints the search term, wrapped in the style:

Figure 6-3. Highlighting the search term on the results page confirms for visitors that they got what they requested

	echo "You searched for <span class=\"arg\">".$arg." </span>";

You also can create a custom PHP function (or modify one you've already made to handle other text-processing tasks) to highlight the search term in the body of the article that the visitor requests from the results page:

	function processText($text,$arg) {
	…other text-processing commands…
	$text = str_replace($arg,"<span class=\"arg\">".$arg."</span>",$text);
	return $text;
	}