'TextHelper#highlight' now accepts a block to highlight the matched words.

The helper will yield each matched word, and you can use this instead of the
':highlighter' option for more complex replacing logic:

  highlight('My email is me@work.com', EMAIL_REGEXP) { |m| mail_to(m) }
  # => 'My email is <a href="mailto:me@work.com">me@work.com</a>'

actionview/CHANGELOG.md

@@ -1,3 +1,12 @@
+*   The `highlight` helper now accepts a block to be used instead of the `highlighter`
+    option.
+
+    *Lucas Mazza*
+
+*   The `except` and `highlight` helpers now accept regular expressions.
+
+    *Jan Szumiec*
+
 *   Flatten the array parameter in `safe_join`, so it behaves consistently with
     `Array#join`.
 

actionview/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb

@@ -103,11 +103,14 @@ module ActionView
       # Highlights one or more +phrases+ everywhere in +text+ by inserting it into
       # a <tt>:highlighter</tt> string. The highlighter can be specialized by passing <tt>:highlighter</tt>
       # as a single-quoted string with <tt>\1</tt> where the phrase is to be inserted (defaults to
-      # '<mark>\1</mark>')
+      # '<mark>\1</mark>') or passing a block that receives each matched term.
       #
       #   highlight('You searched for: rails', 'rails')
       #   # => You searched for: <mark>rails</mark>
       #
+      #   highlight('You searched for: rails', /for|rails/)
+      #   # => You searched <mark>for</mark>: <mark>rails</mark>
+      #
       #   highlight('You searched for: ruby, rails, dhh', 'actionpack')
       #   # => You searched for: ruby, rails, dhh
       #
@@ -116,17 +119,25 @@ module ActionView
       #
       #   highlight('You searched for: rails', 'rails', highlighter: '<a href="search?q=\1">\1</a>')
       #   # => You searched for: <a href="search?q=rails">rails</a>
+      #
+      #   highlight('You searched for: rails', 'rails') { |match| link_to(search_path(q: match, match)) }
+      #   # => You searched for: <a href="search?q=rails">rails</a>
       def highlight(text, phrases, options = {})
         text = sanitize(text) if options.fetch(:sanitize, true)
 
         if text.blank? || phrases.blank?
           text
         else
-          highlighter = options.fetch(:highlighter, '<mark>\1</mark>')
           match = Array(phrases).map do |p|
             Regexp === p ? p.to_s : Regexp.escape(p)
           end.join('|')
-          text.gsub(/(#{match})(?![^<]*?>)/i, highlighter)
+
+          if block_given?
+            text.gsub(/(#{match})(?![^<]*?>)/i) { |found| yield found }
+          else
+            highlighter = options.fetch(:highlighter, '<mark>\1</mark>')
+            text.gsub(/(#{match})(?![^<]*?>)/i, highlighter)
+          end
         end.html_safe
       end
 

actionview/test/template/text_helper_test.rb

@@ -265,6 +265,13 @@ class TextHelperTest < ActionView::TestCase
     assert_equal options, passed_options
   end
 
+  def test_highlight_with_block
+    assert_equal(
+      "<b>one</b> <b>two</b> <b>three</b>",
+      highlight("one two three", ["one", "two", "three"]) { |word| "<b>#{word}</b>" }
+    )
+  end
+
   def test_excerpt
     assert_equal("...is a beautiful morn...", excerpt("This is a beautiful morning", "beautiful", :radius => 5))
     assert_equal("This is a...", excerpt("This is a beautiful morning", "this", :radius => 5))