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React component to highlight words within a larger body of text.

Check out a demo here.

Usage

To use it, just provide it with an array of search terms and a body of text to highlight.

Try this example in Code Sandbox.

import React from "react";
import { createRoot } from "react-dom/client";
import Highlighter from "react-highlight-words";

const root = createRoot(document.getElementById("root"));
root.render(
  <Highlighter
    highlightClassName="YourHighlightClass"
    searchWords={["and", "or", "the"]}
    autoEscape={true}
    textToHighlight="The dog is chasing the cat. Or perhaps they're just playing?"
  />
);

And the Highlighter will mark all occurrences of search terms within the text:

screen shot 2015-12-19 at 8 23 43 am

Props

Property Type Required? Description
activeClassName String The class name to be applied to an active match. Use along with activeIndex
activeIndex Number Specify the match index that should be actively highlighted. Use along with activeClassName
activeStyle Object The inline style to be applied to an active match. Use along with activeIndex
autoEscape Boolean Escape characters in searchWords which are meaningful in regular expressions
className String CSS class name applied to the outer/wrapper <span>
caseSensitive Boolean Search should be case sensitive; defaults to false
findChunks Function Use a custom function to search for matching chunks. This makes it possible to use arbitrary logic when looking for matches. See the default findChunks function in highlight-words-core for signature. Have a look at the custom findChunks example on how to use it.
highlightClassName String or Object CSS class name applied to highlighted text or object mapping search term matches to class names.
highlightStyle Object Inline styles applied to highlighted text
highlightTag Node or String Type of tag to wrap around highlighted matches. Defaults to mark but can also be a React component (class or functional)
sanitize Function Process each search word and text to highlight before comparing (eg remove accents); signature (text: string): string
searchWords Array<String | RegExp> Array of search words. String search terms are automatically cast to RegExps unless autoEscape is true.
textToHighlight String Text to highlight matches in
unhighlightClassName String CSS class name applied to unhighlighted text
unhighlightStyle Object Inline styles applied to unhighlighted text
unhighlightTag Node or String Type of tag applied to unhighlighted parts. Defaults to span but can also be a React component (class or functional)
* any Any other props (such as title or data-*) are applied to the outer/wrapper <span>

Custom highlight tag

By default, this component uses an HTML Mark Text element (<mark>) to wrap matched text, but you can inject a custom tag using the highlightTag property. This tag should be a React component that accepts the following properties:

Property Type Description
children String Text to be highlighted
highlightIndex Number Index of matched text

For example:

const Highlight = ({ children, highlightIndex }) => (
  <strong className="highlighted-text">{children}</strong>
);

Installation

yarn add react-highlight-words
npm i react-highlight-words

License

MIT License - fork, modify and use however you want.