Highlight a word with jQuery

Question

I basically need to highlight a particular word in a block of text. For example, pretend I wanted to highlight the word "dolor" in this text:

<p>
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
</p>
<p>
    Quisque bibendum sem ut lacus. Integer dolor ullamcorper libero.
    Aliquam rhoncus eros at augue. Suspendisse vitae mauris.
</p>

How do I convert the above to something like this:

<p>
    Lorem ipsum <span class="myClass">dolor</span> sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
</p>
<p>
    Quisque bibendum sem ut lacus. Integer <span class="myClass">dolor</span> ullamcorper
    libero. Aliquam rhoncus eros at augue. Suspendisse vitae mauris.
</p>

Is this possible with jQuery?

Edit: As Sebastian pointed out, this is quite possible without jQuery - but I was hoping there might be a special method of jQuery which would let you do selectors on the text itself. I'm already using jQuery heavily on this site, so keeping everything wrapped up in jQuery would make things perhaps a bit more tidy.

Answer 1

You can use the following function to highlight any word in your text.

function color_word(text_id, word, color) {
    words = $('#' + text_id).text().split(' ');
    words = words.map(function(item) { return item == word ? "<span style='color: " + color + "'>" + word + '</span>' : item });
    new_words = words.join(' ');
    $('#' + text_id).html(new_words);
    }

Simply target the element that contains the text, choosing the word to colorize and the color of choice.

Here is an example:

<div id='my_words'>
This is some text to show that it is possible to color a specific word inside a body of text. The idea is to convert the text into an array using the split function, then iterate over each word until the word of interest is identified. Once found, the word of interest can be colored by replacing that element with a span around the word. Finally, replacing the text with jQuery's html() function will produce the desired result.
</div>

Usage,

color_word('my_words', 'possible', 'hotpink')