Replace text but not the HTML tags?

Question

I\'m doing text matching on an Autocomplete in JQuery, by overloading the _renderItem method to check the JSON object for the text the user searched for. Upon finding it, I\

Answer 1

You'll have to search text nodes and replace them with the html you want. See this question: Find word in HTML.

Edit: Here's a jQuery version of my answer there.

http://jsfiddle.net/gilly3/auJkG/

function searchHTML(searchString, htmlString) {
    var expr = new RegExp(searchString, "gi");
    var container = $("<div>").html(htmlString);
    var elements = container.find("*").andSelf();
    var textNodes = elements.contents().not(elements);
    textNodes.each(function() {
        var matches = this.nodeValue.match(expr);
        if (matches) {
            var parts = this.nodeValue.split(expr);
            for (var n = 0; n < parts.length; n++) {
                if (n) {
                    $("<span>").text(matches[n - 1]).insertBefore(this);
                }
                if (parts[n]) {
                    $(document.createTextNode(parts[n])).insertBefore(this);
                }
            }
            $(this).remove();
        }
    });
    return container.html();
}