Find and Replace text in the entire table using a MySQL query

Question

Usually I use manual find to replace text in a MySQL database using phpmyadmin. I'm tired of it now, how can I run a query to find and replace a text with new text in the entire table in phpmyadmin?

Example: find keyword domain.com, replace with www.domain.com.

Answer 1

For a single table update

 UPDATE `table_name`
 SET `field_name` = replace(same_field_name, 'unwanted_text', 'wanted_text')

From multiple tables-

If you want to edit from all tables, best way is to take the dump and then find/replace and upload it back.

Answer 2

The easiest way I have found is to dump the database to a text file, run a sed command to do the replace, and reload the database back into MySQL.

All commands below are bash on Linux.

Dump database to text file

mysqldump -u user -p databasename > ./db.sql

Run sed command to find/replace target string

sed -i 's/oldString/newString/g' ./db.sql

Reload the database into MySQL

mysql -u user -p databasename < ./db.sql

Easy peasy.

Answer 3

Put this in a php file and run it and it should do what you want it to do.

// Connect to your MySQL database.
$hostname = "localhost";
$username = "db_username";
$password = "db_password";
$database = "db_name";

mysql_connect($hostname, $username, $password);

// The find and replace strings.
$find = "find_this_text";
$replace = "replace_with_this_text";

$loop = mysql_query("
    SELECT
        concat('UPDATE ',table_schema,'.',table_name, ' SET ',column_name, '=replace(',column_name,', ''{$find}'', ''{$replace}'');') AS s
    FROM
        information_schema.columns
    WHERE
        table_schema = '{$database}'")
or die ('Cant loop through dbfields: ' . mysql_error());

while ($query = mysql_fetch_assoc($loop))
{
        mysql_query($query['s']);
}

Answer 4

Running an SQL query in PHPmyadmin to find and replace text in all wordpress blog posts, such as finding mysite.com/wordpress and replacing that with mysite.com/news Table in this example is tj_posts

UPDATE `tj_posts`
SET `post_content` = replace(post_content, 'mysite.com/wordpress', 'mysite.com/news')

Answer 5

Another option is to generate the statements for each column in the database:

SELECT CONCAT(
    'update ', table_name , 
    ' set ', column_name, ' = replace(', column_name,', ''www.oldDomain.com'', ''www.newDomain.com'');'
) AS statement
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_schema = 'mySchema' AND table_name LIKE 'yourPrefix_%';

This should generate a list of update statements that you can then execute.

Answer 6

 UPDATE table SET field = replace(field, text_needs_to_be_replaced, text_required);

Like for example, if I want to replace all occurrences of John by Mark I will use below,

UPDATE student SET student_name = replace(student_name, 'John', 'Mark');

Answer 7

phpMyAdmin includes a neat find-and-replace tool.

Select the table, then hit Search > Find and replace

This query took about a minute and successfully replaced several thousand instances of oldurl.ext with the newurl.ext within Column post_content

Best thing about this method : You get to check every match before committing.

N.B. I am using phpMyAdmin 4.9.0.1

Answer 8

If you are positive that none of the fields to be updated are serialized, the solutions above will work well.

However, if any of the fields that need updating contain serialized data, an SQL Query or a simple search/replace on a dump file, will break serialization (unless the replaced string has exactly the same number of characters as the searched string).

To be sure, a "serialized" field looks like this:

a:1:{s:13:"administrator";b:1;}  

The number of characters in the relevant data is encoded as part of the data.
Serialization is a way to convert "objects" into a format easily stored in a database, or to easily transport object data between different languages.
Here is an explanation of different methods used to serialize object data, and why you might want to do so, and here is a WordPress-centric post: Serialized Data, What Does That Mean And Why is it so Important? in plain language.

It would be amazing if MySQL had some built in tool to handle serialized data automatically, but it does not, and since there are different serialization formats, it would not even make sense for it to do so.

wp-cli
Some of the answers above seemed specific to WordPress databases, which serializes much of its data. WordPress offers a command line tool, wp search-replace, that does handle serialization.
A basic command would be:

    wp search-replace 'an-old-string' 'a-new-string' --dry-run

However, WordPress emphasizes that the guid should never be changed, so it recommends skipping that column.
It also suggests that often times you'll want to skip the wp_users table.
Here's what that would look like:

wp search-replace 'https://old-domain.com' 'https://shiney-new-domain.com' --skip-columns=guid --skip-tables=wp_users --dry-run

Note: I added the --dry-run flag so a copy-paste won't automatically ruin anyone's database. After you're sure the script does what you want, run it again without that flag.

Plugins
If you are using WordPress, there are also many free and commercial plugins available that offer a gui interface to do the same, packaged with many additional features.

Interconnect/it php script
Interconnect/it offers a php script to handle serialized data: Safe Search and Replace tool. It was created for use on WordPress sites, but it looks like it can be used on any database serialized by PHP.
Many companies, including WordPress itself, recommends this tool. Instructions here, about 3/4 down the page.

Answer 9

I believe "swapnesh" answer to be the best ! Unfortunately I couldn't execute it in phpMyAdmin (4.5.0.2) who although illogical (and tried several things) it kept saying that a new statement was found and that no delimiter was found…

Thus I came with the following solution that might be usefull if you exeprience the same issue and have no other access to the database than PMA…

UPDATE `wp_posts` AS `toUpdate`,
(SELECT `ID`,REPLACE(`guid`,'http://old.tld','http://new.tld') AS `guid` 
 FROM `wp_posts` WHERE `guid` LIKE 'http://old.tld%') AS `updated`
SET `toUpdate`.`guid`=`updated`.`guid`
WHERE `toUpdate`.`ID`=`updated`.`ID`;

To test the expected result you may want to use :

SELECT `toUpdate`.`guid` AS `old guid`,`updated`.`guid` AS `new guid`
FROM `wp_posts` AS `toUpdate`,
(SELECT `ID`,REPLACE(`guid`,'http://old.tld','http://new.tld') AS `guid`
 FROM `wp_posts` WHERE `guid` LIKE 'http://old.tld%') AS `updated`
WHERE `toUpdate`.`ID`=`updated`.`ID`;

Answer 10

the best you export it as sql file and open it with editor such as visual studio code and find and repalace your words. i replace in 1 gig file sql in 1 minutes for 16 word that total is 14600 word. its the best way. and after replace it save and import it again. do not forget compress it with zip for import.

Answer 11

UPDATE  `MySQL_Table` 
SET  `MySQL_Table_Column` = REPLACE(`MySQL_Table_Column`, 'oldString', 'newString')
WHERE  `MySQL_Table_Column` LIKE 'oldString%';

Answer 12

Generate change SQL queries (FAST)

mysql -e "SELECT CONCAT( 'update ', table_name , ' set ', column_name, ' = replace(', column_name,', ''www.oldsite.com'', ''www.newsite.com'');' ) AS statement FROM information_schema.columns WHERE table_name LIKE 'wp_%'" -u root -p your_db_name_here > upgrade_script.sql

Remove any garbage at the start of the file. I had some.

nano upgrade_script.sql

Run generated script with --force options to skip errors. (SLOW - grab a coffee if big DB)

mysql -u root -p your_db_name_here --force < upgrade_script.sql

Answer 13

In the case of sentences with uppercase - lowercase letters, We can use BINARY REPACE

UPDATE `table_1`  SET  `field_1` =  BINARY REPLACE(`field_1`, 'find_string', 'replace_string')