How to determine if search string is wrapped by anchor tag in larger string- javascript regular expressions

Question

var content = "This is dummy <a href='#'>content</a> for my <a href='#'>Search String</a> and here is another Search String without an anchor tag",
    searchString = "Search String";

Using regular expressions in javascript/jquery, how can I determine if the FIRST searchString in content string is wrapped in an anchor tag or not? I only need a boolean true/false to determine if this is directly wrapped by

Answer 1

The most reliable way is to parse the HTML and search recursively for the first occurence of the text. Then, check whether the/a parent of that text node is an anchor.

Here is a generic function I've written:

/**
  * Searches for the first occurence of str in any text node contained in the given DOM
  * @param {jQuery} dom A jQuery object containing your DOM nodes
  * @param {String} str The string you want to search for.
  * @returns {Object} Returns either null or the text node if str was found.
  */
function searchFirstTextOccurrence(dom, str) {
    var foundNode = null;

    dom.contents().each(function (idx, node) {
        if (node.nodeType == Node.TEXT_NODE) {
            if (node.textContent.indexOf(str) !== -1) {
                foundNode = node;
                // break out of each()
                return false;
            }
        } else if (node.nodeType == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
            var foundInnerNode = searchFirstTextOccurrence($(node), str);
            if (foundInnerNode) {
                foundNode = foundInnerNode;
                // break out of each()
                return false;
            }
        }
    });
    return foundNode;
}

Your use case:

→ jsFiddle

var content = "This is<div> dummy <a href='#'>content</a> for my <a href='#'>Search String</a> and</div> here is another Searchx String without an anchor tag";
var searchString = "Search String";

var dom = $("<div>" + content + "</div>");
var firstOccurence = searchFirstTextOccurrence(dom, searchString);
if ($(firstOccurence).closest("a").length > 0) {
    console.log("Yep");
} else {
    console.log("No");
}