javascript - Search For Words, Replace With Links

Question

I have an array like this

var words = [
    {
        word: 'Something',
        link: 'http://www.something.com'
    },
    {
        word: 'Something Else',
        link: 'http://www.something.com/else'
    }
];

I want it to search the page for word and replace it with link. Is there an efficent way of doing this? It seems it may be CPU hungry.

Sorry should have exlained more...

It would search each element with the class .message for instance. Then find all of the words within that.

There would also be a few hundred within this array

Answer 1

A good strategy is:

1) Build an object whose keys are the phrases to replace and whose values are the links to replace them with.

2) While doing that, construct a regular expression that can match any of the keys, then

3) Use that regex to globally replace.

Rough example:

var replacementDict = {
    'foo': 'http://www.foo.com/',
    'bar': 'http://www.bar.net/'
};
var theRegex = /(foo|bar)/g;
theText.replace(theRegex, function(s, theWord) {
    return "<a href='" + replacementDict[theWord] + "'>" + theWord + "</a>";
});