在文本中搜索特殊字符

Question

I have this Javascript code below that searches for any word entered into a textfield. Now, the text that needs to be searched through contains special characters like the apostrophe and dot in this sample text: "And the tribe of Zeb′u·lun."

Now, how can I adopt my JS code to include those special characters? If I type Zebulun with no special characters in my textfield the search function cannot find it.

   var SearchResultCount = 0;
    var a = new Array();
    var oneTime = false;

    // helper function, recursively searches in elements and their child nodes
    function HighlightAllOccurencesOfStringForElement(element,keyword) {
        if (element) {
            if (element.nodeType == 3) { // Text node
                while (true) {
                    var value = element.nodeValue; // Search for keyword in text node
                    var idx = value.toLowerCase().indexOf(keyword;

                    if (idx < 0) break; // not found, abort

                    var span = document.createElement("span");
                    var text = document.createTextNode(value.substr(idx,keyword.length));
                    span.appendChild(text);
                    span.setAttribute("class","MyAppHighlight");

                    text = document.createTextNode(value.substr(idx+keyword.length));
                    element.deleteData(idx, value.length - idx);
                    var next = element.nextSibling;
                    element.parentNode.insertBefore(span, next);
                    element.parentNode.insertBefore(text, next);
                    element = text;

                    span.scrollIntoView();
                    span.style.background= "-webkit-linear-gradient(top, #FAE309, #FFF7AA)"; 
                    span.style.fontWeight = "bold";
                    span.style.padding = "2px";
                    span.style.borderRadius = "5px";
                    span.style.boxShadow = "0px 0px 2px black";
                    a.push(span); // SET THIS CODE HERE
                    SearchResultCount++; // update the counter
                }

            } else if (element.nodeType == 1) { // Element node
                if (element.style.display != "none" && element.nodeName.toLowerCase() != 'select') {
                    for (var i=element.childNodes.length-1; i>=0; i--) {
                        HighlightAllOccurencesOfStringForElement(element.childNodes[i],keyword);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

// the main entry point to start the search
function HighlightAllOccurencesOfString(keyword) {
    RemoveAllHighlights();
    HighlightAllOccurencesOfStringForElement(document.body, keyword.toLowerCase());
}

Answer 1

First off, there's a closing parenthesis missing in the following line:

var idx = value.toLowerCase().indexOf(keyword;

So I wouldn't be surprised if the function didn't work at all.

To answer your question, one way to do this is to wash out every character except alphabetic characters using the String variable's native replace() function. You'd have to do this with both the search term and the text you're searching, so you'll have to pass both your value and your keyword variables through the function. Something like this:

keyword = cleanUp(keyword);
var value = cleanUp(element.nodeValue);
...
function cleanUp(toClean) {
    cleaned = toClean.replace([^a-zA-Z],""); //Deletes non-alphabetic characters (including spaces) by replacing them with nothing. If you want to leave spaces intact, use [^a-zA-Z ] instead.
    return cleaned;
}

Once this is done, use the same function you've got going to compare the two strings.