Save selection text and show it later in html and javascript

Question

I have a difficult situation with html and javascript. My html page allows user to select text and highlight it with colors. Now I want to save the state into database to sh

Answer 1

Since you use a plugin for text highlighting, get the highlighted words using jQuery:

var words = $('.highlight').map(function() { return $(this).text(); });

Then put them in an array

var saved = [ ];
for (var word in words) {
    if (-1 === saved.indexOf(word)) {
        saved.push(word);
    }
}

Finally you can save them in the database. A bad (but quick) way to do this is to save the list as comma delimited, a famous SQL antipattern:

var wordList = saved.join(',');

When you retrieve the value, you split it into words, and for each word invoke the highlight plugin.

This will not work if any of the texts contain a comma. In that case you'd better save each word individually, which saves several other troubles in the end, rather than figuring out a separating character that's "unlikely" to pop up in a user text.