A while ago I posted this question asking if it's possible to convert text to HTML links if they match a list of terms from my database.
I have a fairly huge list of terms - around 6000.
The accepted answer on that question was superb, but having never used XPath, I was at a loss when problems started occurring. At one point, after fiddling with code, I somehow managed to add over 40,000 random characters to our database -
the majority of which required manual removal. Since then I've lost faith in that idea and
the more simple PHP solutions simply weren't efficient enough to deal with
the amount of data and
the quantity of terms.
My next attempt at a solution is to write a JS script which, once
the page has loaded, retrieves
the terms and matches them against
the text on a page.
This answer has an idea which I'd like to attempt.
I would use AJAX to retrieve
the terms from
the database, to build an object such as this:
var words = [
{
word: '
Something',
link: 'http://www.
something.com'
},
{
word: '
Something Else',
link: 'http://www.
something.com/else'
}
];
When
the object has been built, I'd use this kind of code:
//for each array element
$.each(words,
function() {
//store it ("this" is gonna become
the dom element in
the next function)
var search = this;
$('.message').each(
function() {
//if it's exactly
the same
if ($(this).text() === search.word) {
//do your magic tricks
$(this).html('<a href="' + search.link + '">' + search.link + '</a>');
}
}
);
}
);
Now, at first sight, there is a major issue here: with 6,000 terms, will this code be in any way efficient enough to do what I'm trying to do?.
One option would possibly be to perform some of
the overhead within
the PHP script that
the AJAX communicates with.
For instance, I could send
the ID of
the post and then
the PHP script could use SQL statements to retrieve all of
the information from
the post and match it against all 6,000 terms.. then
the return call to
the JavaScript could simply be
the matching terms, which would significantly reduce
the number of matches
the above jQuery would make (around 50 at most).
I have no problem with
the script taking a few seconds to "load" on
the user's browser, as long as it isn't impacting their CPU usage or anything like that.
So, two questions in one:
Can I make this work?
What steps can I take to make it as efficient as possible?
Thanks in advance,
