Highlight Search TextBlock

Question

My goal is to create a custom TextBlock control that has a new dependency property, SearchText. This property will contain a regular expression. All occurrences of this regular expression in the text of the TextBlock will be highlighted using a custom style (another DP).

My current implementation involves clearing all of the Inline objects in the TextBlock's InlineCollection. I then fill the TextBlock with runs for unhighlighted text and runs for highlighted text with the style applied (this method does not support adding inlines directly to the TextBlock, instead TextBlock.TextProperty has to be used).

Works great, but sometimes I get a strange exception when trying to clear the Inlines: InvalidOperationException: "Cannot modify the logical children for this node at this time because a tree walk is in progress."

This problem seems to be related to this one. I am modifying the inlines in the TextChanged function, but I'm using a flag to avoid infinite recursive edits.

Any thoughts on how to architect this custom control? Is there a better way to do this? How do I get around this exception?

Thanks!

Answer 1

In my implementation, I solved this by just adding another dependency property, called OriginalText. When it's modified, I updated both the Text property and update the highlighting. Here's the code:

  public class HighlightTextBlock : TextBlock
{
    public string HighlightedText
    {
        get { return (string)GetValue(HighlightedTextProperty); }
        set { SetValue(HighlightedTextProperty, value); }
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty HighlightedTextProperty =
        DependencyProperty.Register("HighlightedText", typeof(string), typeof(HighlightTextBlock), new UIPropertyMetadata(string.Empty, UpdateHighlightEffect));

    public static readonly DependencyProperty OriginalTextProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
        "OriginalText", typeof(string), typeof(HighlightTextBlock), new PropertyMetadata(default(string), OnOriginalTextChanged));

    private static void OnOriginalTextChanged(DependencyObject obj, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args)
    {
        var block = ((HighlightTextBlock)obj);
        block.Text = block.OriginalText;
        block.UpdateHighlightEffect();
    }

    public string OriginalText
    {
        get { return (string)GetValue(OriginalTextProperty); }
        set { SetValue(OriginalTextProperty, value); }
    }

    private static void UpdateHighlightEffect(DependencyObject sender, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        if (!(string.IsNullOrEmpty(e.NewValue as string) && string.IsNullOrEmpty(e.OldValue as string)))
            ((HighlightTextBlock)sender).UpdateHighlightEffect();
    }

    private void UpdateHighlightEffect()
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(HighlightedText)) return;

        var allText = GetCompleteText();

        Inlines.Clear();

        var indexOfHighlightString = allText.IndexOf(HighlightedText, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase);

        if (indexOfHighlightString < 0)
        {
            Inlines.Add(allText);
        }
        else
        {
            Inlines.Add(allText.Substring(0, indexOfHighlightString));
            Inlines.Add(new Run()
                            {
                                Text = allText.Substring(indexOfHighlightString, HighlightedText.Length),
                                Background = Consts.SearchHighlightColor,
                            });
            Inlines.Add(allText.Substring(indexOfHighlightString + HighlightedText.Length));
        }

    }

    private string GetCompleteText()
    {
        var allText = Inlines.OfType<Run>().Aggregate(new StringBuilder(), (sb, run) => sb.Append(run.Text), sb => sb.ToString());
        return allText;
    }
}

Answer 2

Still not sure if there's a better way to do this altogether, but I appear to have found a work around.

I was updating the inlines/runs in a function that was fired by the change notification for the TextProperty and the SearchTextProperty.

Now I'm firing the highlight/update code from a Dispatcher.BeginInvoke() call in the change notification with DispatcherPriority.Normal.