String highlighting problem (newbie)

Ruby
1

I have two questions:

  1. I have a string
    @string = “This is a long string”.

How can I do to make two words “bold” or “italic” in this string, for
example “is” and “long” shoudl be ?

  1. I am searching in the mysql database with this code:

@results = Product.find(:all, :conditions => [ “name LIKE ?”,
“%”+@searchstring+"%"])

What if I want to search for many words in different order? I mean if I
should searched for example: “string is a long this” in the string
above?

Thanks,

Mark

2

On 29 Dec 2007, at 13:47, Mark T. wrote:

I have two questions:

  1. I have a string
    @string = “This is a long string”.

How can I do to make two words “bold” or “italic” in this string, for
example “is” and “long” shoudl be ?

I would probably use gsub. But at the end of the day it depends on how
the words to be bolded are determined.

  1. I am searching in the mysql database with this code:

@results = Product.find(:all, :conditions => [ “name LIKE ?”,
“%”+@searchstring+"%"])

What if I want to search for many words in different order? I mean
if I
should searched for example: “string is a long this” in the string
above?

You need a full text search engine, for example the one in mysql,
ferret, sphinx etc…

Fred

3

On Dec 29, 2007 6:47 AM, Mark T. [email protected] wrote:

I have two questions:

  1. I have a string
    @string = “This is a long string”.

How can I do to make two words “bold” or “italic” in this string, for
example “is” and “long” shoudl be ?

Brute force method?

ar = @string.split(’ ‘)
ar[1] = “#{ar[1]}”
ar[3] = “#{ar[3]}”
@string = ar.join(’ ')

4

Thanks for your answer.

I have now used the following for the 1.:

a1 = “+”
a2 = “"
@searchstring = params[:searching].gsub(" ", " +”)
@results = Product.find_by_sql(“SELECT * FROM products WHERE MATCH
(name,sku) AGAINST (’”+a1+@searchstring+a2+"’ IN BOOLEAN MODE) order by
name desc LIMIT 0,50;")

It works, BUT not for numbers. Any idea why it coesn´t work for numbers?
If I have example: “this is 34” in the database. It works fine “this
is”, but as soon as I enter the “34” it shows no results.

About 2:

Brute force method? - What do you mean by this?

ar = @string.split(’ ‘)
ar[1] = “#{ar[1]}”
ar[3] = “#{ar[3]}”
@string = ar.join(’ ')

5

On Dec 29, 2007 12:11 PM, Mark T. [email protected] wrote:

Brute force method? - What do you mean by this?

ar = @string.split(’ ‘)
ar[1] = “#{ar[1]}”
ar[3] = “#{ar[3]}”
@string = ar.join(’ ')

By brute force, I meant simply a quick and dirty operation

  1. split the string into components
  2. modify the components
  3. reassemble/join the components

If you have need to do this on a repetitive basis, you could develop a
method to apply this logic, something like

def hilite(a_str, a_nbr, a_tag=‘b’)
ix = a_nbr - 1
ar = a_str.split(’ ‘)
ar[ix] = “<#{a_tag}>#{ar[ix]}</#{a_tag}>”
str = ar.join(’ ')
return str
end
strx = “This is a long string”
p strx
strx = hilite(strx,2) # make word 2 bold
p strx
strx = hilite(strx,4,‘i’) # make word 4 italic
p strx

This is still pretty brute force, since the method will break badly if
you pass it the wrong elements - no error/bounds checking. You could
modify it to scan for a particular word to hilite instead of using a
word number.

Enjoy,

6

About 2:

Brute force method? - What do you mean by this?

ar = @string.split(’ ‘)
ar[1] = “#{ar[1]}”
ar[3] = “#{ar[3]}”
@string = ar.join(’ ')

Also the string can be different, like “Blabla bla is a long string”.

7

Thanks, but one problem. I don´t now which word to replace. I mean in
practicly I want to search for some words and then replace them with
bold words.

8

On 29 Dec 2007, at 19:11, Mark T. wrote:

name desc LIMIT 0,50;")

It works, BUT not for numbers. Any idea why it coesn´t work for
numbers?
If I have example: “this is 34” in the database. It works fine “this
is”, but as soon as I enter the “34” it shows no results.

Does it work for longer numbers? By default mysql won’t index words
less than 3 characters or so (check the doc) there are also stopwords
etc…

Fred