NAME¶
HTML::Highlight - A module to highlight words or patterns in HTML
documents
SYNOPSIS¶
use HTML::Highlight;
# create the highlighter object
my $hl = new HTML::Highlight (
words => [
'word',
'any',
'car',
'some phrase'
],
wildcards => [
undef,
'%',
'*',
undef
],
colors => [
'#FF0000',
'red',
'green',
'rgb(255, 0, 0)'
],
czech_language => 0,
debug => 0
);
# Remember that you don't need to specify your own colors.
# The default colors should be optimal.
# Now you can use the object to highlight patterns in a document
# by passing content of the document to its highlight() method.
# The highlighter object "remembers" its configuration.
my $highlighted_document = $hl->highlight($document);
MOTIVATION¶
This module was originaly created to work together with fulltext indexing module
DBIx::TextIndex to highlight search results.
A need for a highlighter that takes wildcard matches and HTML tags into account
and supports czech language (or other Slavic languages) was the motivation to
create this module.
DESCRIPTION¶
This module provides Google-like highlighting of words or patterns in HTML
documents. This feature is typically used to highlight search results.
- The construcutor:
-
my $hl = new HTML::Highlight (
words => [],
wildcards => [],
colors => [],
czech_language => 0,
debug => 0
);
This is a constructor of the highlighter object. It takes an array of even
number of parameters.
The words parameter is a reference to an array of words to highlight.
The wildcards parameter is a reference to an array of wildcards, that
are applied to corresponding words in the words array.
A wildcard can be either undef or one of '%' or '*'.
The "%" character means "match any characters":
"%" applied to 'car' ==> matches "car", "cars", "careful", ...
The "*" character means "match also plural form of
the word":
"*" applied to 'car' ==> matches only "car" or "cars"
An undefined wildcard means "match exactly the corresponding
word":
undefined wildcard applied to 'car' ==> matches only "car"
The colors parameter is a reference to an array of CSS color
identificators, that are used to highlight the corresponding words in the
words array.
Default Google-like colors are used if you don't specify your own colors.
Number of colors can be lower than number of words - in this case the
colors are rotated and some of the words are therefore highlighted using
the same color.
The highlighter takes HTML tags into account and therefore does not
"highlight" a word or a pattern inside a tag.
A support for diacritics insenstive matching for ISO-8859-2 languages (for
for example the czech language) can be activated using the
czech_language option. This feature requires a module CzFast
that is available on CPAN in a directory of author TRIPIE or at
http://geocities.com/tripiecz/.
Your system's locales must be set correctly to use the
czech_language feature.
- highlight
-
my $hl_document = $hl->highlight($document);
The only parameter is a document in that you want to highlight the words
that were passed to the constructor of the highlighter object. The method
returns a version of the document in which the words are highlighted.
- preview_context
-
my $sections = $hl->preview_context($document, $num);
This method takes two parameters. The first one is the document you want to
scan for the words that were passed to the constructor of the highlighter
object. The second parameter is an optional integer that specifies maximum
number of characters in each of the context sections (see below). This
parameter defaults to 80 characters if it's not specified. Minimum allowed
value of this parameter is 60.
The method returns a reference to an array of sections of the document in
which the words that were passed to the constructor appear. HTML tags are
removed before the document is proccessed and are not present in the
ouput. This feature is typically used in search engines to preview a
context in which words from a search query appear in the resulting
documents. The words are always in the middle of each of the sections. The
number of sections this method returns is equal to the number of words
passed to the constructor of the highlighter object. That means only the
first occurence of each of the words is taken into account.
SUPPORT¶
No official support is provided, but I welcome any comments, patches and
suggestions on my email.
BUGS¶
I am aware of no bugs.
AVAILABILITY¶
http://geocities.com/tripiecz/
AUTHOR¶
Tomas Styblo, tripie@cpan.org, CPAN-ID TRIPIE
Prague, the Czech republic
LICENSE¶
HTML::Highlight - A module to highlight words or patterns in HTML documents
Copyright (C) 2000 Tomas Styblo (tripie@cpan.org)
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
terms of either:
a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 1, or (at your option) any later version, or
b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this module.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either the GNU General Public License or the
Artistic License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this module, in the
file Artistic. If not, I'll be glad to provide one.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple
Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
SEE ALSO¶
perl(1).