WPF TextBlock highlight certain parts based on search condition

Question

I have TextBlock that has Inlines dynamicly added to it (basically bunch of Run objects that are either italic or bold).

In my application I have search function.

Answer 1

Here I present another Approach for highlighting text. I had a use case where I needed to decorate a bunch of C# Code in WPF, however I did not want to use textBlock.Inlines.Add type of syntax, instead I wanted to generate the highlighting XAML on the fly and then dynamically add it to a Canvas or some other container in WPF.

So suppose you want to colorize the following piece of code and also highlight a part of it:

public static void TestLoop(int count)
{ 
   for(int i=0;i

Suppose the above code is found in a file called Test.txt . Suppose you want to colorize all the C# keywords (public, static, void etc..) and simple types(int, string) in Blue, and Console.WriteLine highlight in yellow.

Step 0. Create a new WPF Application and include some sample code similar to above in a file called Test.txt

Step 1. Create a Code Highlighter class:

using System.IO;
using System.Text;

public enum HighLightType
{
    Type = 0,
    Keyword = 1,
    CustomTerm = 2
}

public class CodeHighlighter
{
    public static string[] KeyWords = { "public", "static", "void", "return", "while", "for", "if" };
    public static string[] Types = { "string", "int", "double", "long" };

    private string FormatCodeInXaml(string code, bool withLineBreak)
    {
        string[] mapAr = { "<","<" , //Replace less than sign
                            ">",">" }; //Replace greater than sign
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(code))))
        {
            while (!sr.EndOfStream)
            {
                string line = sr.ReadLine();

                line = line.Replace("\t", "    "); //Replace tabs
                line = line.Replace(" ", " "); //Replace spaces

                for (int i = 0; i < mapAr.Length; i += 2)
                    line = line.Replace(mapAr[i], mapAr[i + 1]);

                if (withLineBreak)
                    sb.AppendLine(line + ""); //Replace line breaks
                else
                    sb.AppendLine(line);
            }

        }
        return sb.ToString();
    }


    private string BuildForegroundTag(string highlightText, string color)
    {
        return "" + highlightText + "";
    }

    private string BuildBackgroundTag(string highlightText, string color)
    {
        return "" + highlightText + "";
    }

    private string HighlightTerm(HighLightType type, string term, string line)
    {
        if (term == string.Empty)
            return line;

        string keywordColor = "Blue";
        string typeColor = "Blue";
        string statementColor = "Yellow";

        if (type == HighLightType.Type)
            return line.Replace(term, BuildForegroundTag(term, typeColor));
        if (type == HighLightType.Keyword)
            return line.Replace(term, BuildForegroundTag(term, keywordColor));
        if (type == HighLightType.CustomTerm)
            return line.Replace(term, BuildBackgroundTag(term, statementColor));

        return line;
    }

    public string ApplyHighlights(string code, string customTerm)
    {
        code = FormatCodeInXaml(code, true);
        customTerm = FormatCodeInXaml(customTerm, false).Trim();

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(code))))
        {
            while (!sr.EndOfStream)
            {
                string line = sr.ReadLine();

                line = HighlightTerm(HighLightType.CustomTerm, customTerm, line);

                foreach (string keyWord in KeyWords)
                    line = HighlightTerm(HighLightType.Keyword, keyWord, line);

                foreach (string type in Types)
                    line = HighlightTerm(HighLightType.Type, type, line);

                sb.AppendLine(line);
            }
        }

        return sb.ToString();

    }
}

Step 2. Add a Canvas XAML tag to your MainWindow.xaml

Step 3. In Your WPF Application add the following code: (make sure that test.txt is in the correct location) :

using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Markup;

namespace TestCodeVisualizer
{
    /// 

    /// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml
    /// 
    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            string testText = File.ReadAllText("Test.txt");
            FrameworkElement fe = GenerateHighlightedTextBlock(testText, "Console.WriteLine");
            this.canvas.Children.Add(fe);
        }


        private FrameworkElement GenerateHighlightedTextBlock(string code, string term)
        {
            CodeHighlighter ch = new CodeHighlighter();
            string uc = "[CONTENT]";

            string content = "" + ch.ApplyHighlights(code, term) + "";
            uc = uc.Replace("[CONTENT]", content);

            FrameworkElement fe = XamlReader.Load(new System.IO.MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(uc))) as FrameworkElement;
            return fe;
        }

    }
}