jquery highlight() breaking in dynamic table - php

Question

I've got a little issue with a highlight function I'm working on. I basically load records out of a database that match the current form data in certain ways. Then, when someone is filling in the form, if they are describing an issue that already exists in my system, it will highlight words that their description has in common with the existing record(s). My issue is that the table breaks. It will work to a certain extent, but sometimes it breaks the PHP loop portion out of the rest of the table, and it then has no formatting, and the highlighting function will not work. To be more specific, once broken, the td tags in the body of the table do not follow the formatting of the header row.
Conditions that cause the undesirable effect:
tabbing through the text area
If too many classes have to be removed or applied at once (via deleting all, adding many words or deleting or searching for a single character with many occurrences)
html on the main page && script to trigger the highlighting
<textarea name="description" id="description"></textarea>
<script>
var delay = (function(){
var timer = 0;
return function(callback, ms){
clearTimeout (timer);
timer = setTimeout(callback, ms);
};
})();
$(function(){
$("#description").keydown(function(){
delay((function(){
$("#displayer *").removeClass('highlight');
var1 = $('textarea#description').val().split(' ');
for (var i=0;i<var1.length;i++){
$("#displayer *").highlight(var1[i], "highlight")};
}),1000);
});
});
</script>
the external php that builds the searched table based on an ajax call is this:
echo '<TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="5" CELLPADDING="5" id="displayer"><FONT FACE="ARIAL">';
echo ' <tr> ';
echo ' <td width="20" ALIGN="LEFT" height="1">ID</td>';
echo ' <td width="89" ALIGN="LEFT" height="1">Date</td> ';
echo ' <td width="200" ALIGN="LEFT" height="1" >Description</td>';
echo ' <td width="89" ALIGN="LEFT" height="1" >Solution</td>';
echo ' <td width="20" ALIGN="LEFT" height="1" >User:</td>';
echo ' <td ALIGN="LEFT" height="1" >Key?:</td>';
echo ' <td ALIGN="LEFT" height="1" >Part:</td>';
echo ' <td ALIGN="LEFT" height="1" >Classified As:</td>';
echo ' </tr> ';
for ($i=1; $i <= $num_results; $i++)
{
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result1);
echo '<TR BGCOLOR="#EFEFEF">';
echo '<TD width="20">';
echo stripslashes($row['0']) ;
echo '</TD>';
echo '<TD width="89" >';
echo $row['1'] ;
echo '</TD>';
echo '<TD width="200">';
echo stripslashes($row['6']) ;
echo '</TD>';
echo '<TD width="89">';
echo stripslashes($row['11']) ;
echo '</TD>';
echo '<TD width="20">';
echo $row['5'] ;
echo '</TD>';
echo '<TD>';
if ($row['8'] == 1)
{echo 'Yes' ;}
else
{echo 'No' ;}
echo '</TD>';
echo '<td>'.$row['10'].'</td>';
echo '<td>'.$row['9'].'</td>';
echo '</TR>';
}
echo '</TABLE>';
external highlight plugin:
jQuery.fn.highlight = function (str, className) {
var regex = new RegExp(str, "gi");
return this.each(function () {
$(this).contents().filter(function() {
return this.nodeType == 3 && regex.test(this.nodeValue);
}).replaceWith(function() {
return (this.nodeValue || "").replace(regex, function(match) {
return "<span class=\"" + className + "\">" + match + "</span>";
});
});
});
};
I think I should add a test for empty with some kind of escape, to solve the first condition, but with the second, I'm not sure what's happening. Any suggestions are definitely appreciated. Sorry for the post being huge and convoluted, but I wanted everyone to have all the information I could provide.

Answer 1

$(function(){
$("#description").keydown(function(){
delay((function(){
var divClone = $("#disp_hidden .serial_display").clone();
$("#displayer .serial_display").replaceWith(divClone);
if ($.trim($('textarea#description').val()) != ''){
var1 = $('textarea#description').val().trim().split(' ');
for (var i=0;i<var1.length;i++){
$("#displayer *").highlight(var1[i], "highlight")};
};
}),1000);
});
});
hidden table clone, replaces at new edit, fixed.