Insert HTML into text node with JavaScript

Question

I\'ve got a little text node:

var node

And I want to wrap a span around every occurrence of \"lol\".

node.nodeValue = node.         


        

Answer 1

Not saying this is a better answer, but I'm posting what I did for completeness. In my case I have already looked up or determined the offsets of the text that I needed to highlight in a particular #text node. This also clarifies the steps.

//node is a #text node, startIndex is the beginning location of the text to highlight, and endIndex is the index of the character just after the text to highlight     

var parentNode = node.parentNode;

// break the node text into 3 parts: part1 - before the selected text, part2- the text to highlight, and part3 - the text after the highlight
var s = node.nodeValue;

// get the text before the highlight
var part1 = s.substring(0, startIndex);

// get the text that will be highlighted
var part2 = s.substring(startIndex, endIndex);

// get the part after the highlight
var part3 = s.substring(endIndex);

// replace the text node with the new nodes
var textNode = document.createTextNode(part1);
parentNode.replaceChild(textNode, node);

// create a span node and add it to the parent immediately after the first text node
var spanNode = document.createElement("span");
spanNode.className = "HighlightedText";
parentNode.insertBefore(spanNode, textNode.nextSibling);

// create a text node for the highlighted text and add it to the span node
textNode = document.createTextNode(part2);
spanNode.appendChild(textNode);

// create a text node for the text after the highlight and add it after the span node
textNode = document.createTextNode(part3);
parentNode.insertBefore(textNode, spanNode.nextSibling);