Thread: find and replace content

find and replace content

From
Mark Nelson
Date:
Hi all,

Just started with PHP and Postgres last week. I have a bunch of
pages that bring in different content depending on the page. Now
I need to change a name that appears in the content throughout
these pages. Is there a way to do a find and replace throughout
the database searching the content? I want to do something like
replace all occurences of Jones with Johnson.

Can I do this directly or do I need to write a simple php page to
do this? I know this sounds simple and the solution probably is
too, but after hours of searching I still cannot find it.

Thanks in advance,
/mark


Re: find and replace content

From
"Oliver Elphick"
Date:
Mark Nelson wrote: PHP and Postgres last week. I have a bunch of
  >pages that bring in different content depending on the page. Now
  >I need to change a name that appears in the content throughout
  >these pages. Is there a way to do a find and replace throughout
  >the database searching the content? I want to do something like
  >replace all occurences of Jones with Johnson.
  >
  >Can I do this directly or do I need to write a simple php page to
  >do this? I know this sounds simple and the solution probably is
  >too, but after hours of searching I still cannot find it.

It depends how you have stored the names.

If the name is in a field by itself, it's easy:

  UPDATE table SET name = 'New Name' WHERE name = 'Old Name';

If the name is mixed up with other text, you may be able to do
a substitution using string functions.  If not, you could COPY the
table out to a flat file, use sed to edit the flat file and then
COPY it back in.  That could all be put into a script driven by
command line parameters.

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Oliver Elphick                                Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight                              http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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