Web Highlighter: a mini tool for highlighting website text

✨A no-runtime dependency lib for highlighting-note & persistence on any website ✨🖍️

Background

It's from an idea: highlight texts on the website and save the highlighted areas just like what you do in PDF.

If you have ever visited medium.com, you must know the feature of highlighting notes: users select a text segment and click the 'highlight' button. Then the text will be highlighted with a shining background color. Besides, the highlighted areas will be saved and recovered when you visit it next time. It's like the simple demo bellow.

This is a useful feature for readers. If you're a developer, you may want your website support it and attract more visits. If you're a user (like me), you may want a browser-plugin to do this.

For this reason, the repo (web-highlighter) aims to help you implement highlighting-note on any website quickly (e.g. blogs, document viewers, online books and so on). It contains the core abilities for note highlighting and persistence. And you can implement your own product by some easy-to-use APIs. It has been used for our sites in production.

Install

npm i web-highlighter

Usage

Only two lines, highlighted when texts are selected.

import Highlighter from 'web-highlighter';
(new Highlighter()).run();

If you need persistence, four lines make it.

import Highlighter from 'web-highlighter';

// 1. initialize
const highlighter = new Highlighter();

// 2. retrieve data from backend, then highlight it on the page
getRemoteData().then(s => highlighter.fromStore(s.startMeta, s.endMeta, s.id, s.text));

// 3. listen for highlight creating, then save to backend
highlighter.on(Highlighter.event.CREATE, ({sources}) => save(sources));

// 4. auto highlight
highlighter.run();

Example

A more complex example

import Highlighter from 'web-highlighter';

// won't highlight pre&code elements
const highlighter = new Highlighter({
    exceptSelectors: ['pre', 'code']
});

// add some listeners to handle interaction, such as hover
highlighter
    .on('selection:hover', ({id}) => {
        // display different bg color when hover
        highlighter.addClass('highlight-wrap-hover', id);
    })
    .on('selection:hover-out', ({id}) => {
        // remove the hover effect when leaving
        highlighter.removeClass('highlight-wrap-hover', id);
    })
    .on('selection:create', ({sources}) => {
        sources = sources.map(hs => ({hs}));
        // save to backend
        store.save(sources);
    });

// retrieve data from store, and display highlights on the website
store.getAll().forEach(
    // hs is the same data saved by 'store.save(sources)'
    ({hs}) => highlighter.fromStore(hs.startMeta, hs.endMeta, hs.text, hs.id)
);

// auto-highlight selections
highlighter.run()

Besides, there is an example in this repo (in example folder). To play with it, you just need ——

Firstly enter the repository and run

npm i

Then start the example

npm start

Finally visit http://127.0.0.1:8085/

Another real product built with web-highlighter (for the highlighting area on the left):

product sample

How it works

It will read the selected range by Selection API. Then the information of the range will be converted to a serializable data structure so that it can be store in backend. When users visit your page next time, these data will be returned and deserialized in your page. The data structure is tech stack independent. So you can use on any 'static' pages made with React / Vue / Angular / jQuery and others.

For more details, please read this article (in Chinese).

API

`highlighter = new Highlighter([opts])`

Create a new highlighter instance.

opts will be merged into the default options (shown bellow).

{
    $root: document.documentElement,
    exceptSelectors: null,
    wrapTag: 'span',
    style: {
        className: 'highlight-mengshou-wrap'
    }
}

All options:

name	type	description	required	default
$root	`Document \| HTMLElement`	the container to enable highlighting	No	`document`
exceptSelectors	`Array<string>`	if an element matches the selector, it won't be highlighted	No	`null`
wrapTag	`string`	the html tag used to wrap highlighted texts	No	`span`
style	`Object`	control highlighted areas style	No	details below

style field options:

name	type	description	required	default
className	`string`	the className for wrap element	No	`highlight-mengshou-wrap`

exceptSelectors needs null or Array<string>. It supports id selectors, class selectors and tag selectors. For example, to skip h1 and .title elements:

var highlighter = new Highlighter({
    exceptSelectors: ['h1', '.title']
});

`highlighter.run()`

Start auto-highlighting. When the user select a text segment, a highlighting will be added to the text automatically.

`highlighter.stop()`

It will stop the auto-highlighting.

`highlighter.dispose()`

When you don't want the highlighter anymore, remember to call it first. It will remove some listeners and do some cleanup.

`highlighter.fromRange(range)`

You can pass a Range object to it and then it will be highlighted. You can use window.getSelection().getRangeAt(0) to get a range object or use document.createRange() to create a new range.

Use it as bellow:

const selection = window.getSelection();
if (selection.isCollapsed) {
    highlighter.fromRange(selection.getRangeAt(0));
}

`highlighter.fromStore(start, end, text, id)`

Mostly, you use this api to highlight text by the persisted information stored from backend.

These four values are from the HighlightSource object. HighlightSource object is a special object created by web-highlighter when highlighted area created. For persistence in backend (database), it's necessary to find a data structure to represent a dom node. This structure is called HighlightSource in web-highlighter.

Four attributes' meanings:

start Object: meta info about the beginning element
end Object: meta info about then end element
text string: text content
id string: unique id

`highlighter.remove(id)`

Remove (clean) a highlighted area by it's unique id. The id will be generated by web-highlighter by default. You can also add a hook for your own rule. Hooks doc here.

`highlighter.removeAll()`

Remove all highlighted areas belonging to the root.

`highlighter.addClass(className, id)`

Add a className for highlighted areas (wrap elements) by unique id. You can change a highlighted area's style by using this api.

`highlighter.removeClass(className, id)`

Remove the className by unique id. It's highlighter.addClass's inverse operation.

`highlighter.getDoms([id])`

Get all the wrap nodes in a highlighted area. A highlighted area may contain many segments. It will return all the dom nodes wrapping these segments.

If the id is not passed, it will return all the areas' wrap nodes.

`highlighter.getIdByDom(node)`

If you have a wrap node, it can return the unique highlight id for you.

`Event Listener`

web-highlighter use listeners to handle the events.

e.g.

var highlighter = new Highlighter();
highlighter.on(Highlighter.event.CREATE, function (data, inst, e) {
    // ...
});

The callback function will receive three parameters:

data any: event data
inst Highlighter: current Highlighter instance
e Event: some event is triggered by the browser (such as click), web-highlighter will expose it

Highlighter.event is EventType type. It contains：

EventType.CLICK: click the highlighted area
EventType.HOVER: mouse enter the highlighted area
EventType.HOVER_OUT: mouse leave the highlighted area
EventType.CREATE: a highlighted area is created
EventType.REMOVE: a highlighted area is removed

Different event has different data. Attributes below:

`EventType.CLICK`

name	description	type
`id`	the highlight id	string

`EventType.HOVER`

name	description	type
`id`	the highlight id	string

`EventType.HOVER_OUT`

name	description	type
`id`	the highlight id	string

`EventType.CREATE`

no parameter e

name	description	type
`source`	`HighlightSource` object	Array
`type`	the reason for creating	string

source is a HighlightSource object. It is an object created by web-highlighter when highlighted area created. For persistence in backend (database), it's necessary to use a data structure which can be serialized (JSON.stringify()) to represent a dom node in browsers. HighlightSource is the data structure designed for this.

type explains why a highlighted area is be created. Now type has two possible values: from-input and from-store. from-input shows that a highlighted area is created because of user's selection. from-store means it from a storage.

`EventType.REMOVE`

no parameter e

name	description	type
`ids`	a list of the highlight id	Array

Compatibility

It depends on Selection API.

IE 10、11
Edge
Firefox 52+
Chrome 15+
Safari 5.1+
Opera 15+

Mobile supports: automatically detect whether mobile devices and use touch events when on mobile devices.

Advance

It provides some hooks for you so that the highlighting behaviour can be controlled better by your own.

To learn more about the hooks, read this doc.

License

MIT