I'm encountering the character %C2%92 in a bunch of MySQL records and looking to replace it with a single quote.
Something like this:
update
tablename
set field = replace(field, UNHEX('92'), "'")
where field RLIKE UNHEX('92')
Any ideas on how to actually accomplish this?
What comes right before/after the C292? Although that looks like a UTF-8 encoding, I don't recognize it.
You really should go back to where the data came from and avoid "url-encoding" the string. (cf PHP's urlencode()). If you are using PHP, then urldecode() will undo the mess: Fetch the row, field = urlencode(field);, then UPDATE the row in the database.
Related
I am trying to get rid of   characters in MYSQL, but am getting weird behavior where using REPLACE is returning a hexadecimal string.
The original value is some HTML stored in a field with the type BLOB:
<h3>This was just an appetizer. Are you ready for the full course?</h3><p>Dive into more business news, check out the latest tech trends, and get a couple quick tips from our health section. </p></div>
The SQL I am using is this:
UPDATE tbl
SET field = REPLACE(field, CHAR(160), '');
And after executing, this is what is left in the database:
3C68333E5468697320776173206A75737420616E206170706574697A65722E2041726520796F7520726561647920666F72207468652066756C6C20636F757273653F3C2F68333E3C703E4469766520696E746F206D6F726520627573696E657373206E6577732C20636865636B206F757420746865206C61746573742074656368207472656E64732C20616E6420676574206120636F75706C6520717569636B20746970732066726F6D206F7572206865616C74682073656374696F6E2E20C23C2F703E3C2F6469763E
What is going on and how could I avoid this? Do I need to use VARCHAR for the field type?
You get (binary) BLOB back, after the replace.
so you have to convert it back to text
UPDATE tbl
SET field = CAST(REPLACE(field, CHAR(160), '')AS CHAR(10000) CHARACTER SET utf8);
Of course you have to check character set and size.
I found that CHAR codes didn't work, but a copy pasted whitespace worked. This looks like a normal space, but is in fact CHAR(160) and I don't have an error anymore. ' '
I am migrating an excel sheet (csv) to mysql, however when I do an insert, some fields end up with empty spaces at the end, and I cant get rid of them for some reason. So I assume there is a wierd character at the end, since not even this:
UPDATE FOO set FIELD2 = TRIM(Replace(Replace(Replace(FIELD2,'\t',''),'\n',''),'\r',''));
Gets rid of it completely, I still have a whitespace at the end and I dont know how to get rid of it. I have over 2000 entries, so doing it manually is not an option. I am using Laravel with the revision package and it doesnt work because it thinks that those spaces at the end are changes and it creates a bunch of duplicates. Thank you for your help.
If you think there are weird characters in the original csv, you could open it in a text processor capable of doing regex replaces, and then replace all non ascii characters with nothing.
Your regex would look like this:
[^\u0000-\u007F]+
then after removing any possible strange characters, re-import the data into the database.
Unfortunately, I don't think regex replaces are possible in sql, so you'll need to re-import.
I am struggling with this query and want to know if I am wasting my time and need to write a php script or is something like the following actually possible?
UPDATE my_table
SET #userid = user_id
AND SET filename('http://pathto/newfilename_'#userid'.jpg')
FROM my_table
WHERE filename
LIKE '%_%' AND filename
LIKE '%jpg'AND filename
NOT LIKE 'http%';
Basically I have 700 odd files that need renaming in the database as they do not match the filenames as I am changing system, they are called in the database.
The format is 2_gfhgfhf.jpg which translates to userid_randomjumble.jpg
But not all files in the database are in this format only about 700 out of thousands. So I want to identify names that contain _ but don't contain http (thats the correct format that I don't want to touch).
I can do that fine but now comes the tricky bit!!
I want to replace that file name userid_randomjumble.jpg with http://pathto/filename_userid.jpg So I want to set the column user_id in that row to a variable and insert it into my new filename.
The above doesn't work for obvious reasons but I am not sure if there is a way round what I'm trying to do. I have no idea if it's possible? Am I wasting my time with this and should I turn to PHP with mysql and stop being lazy? Or is there a way to get this to work?
Yes it is possible without the php. Here is a simple example
SET #a:=0;
SELECT * FROM table WHERE field_name = #a;
Yes you can do it using straightforward SQL:
UPDATE my_table
SET filename = CONCAT('http://pathto/newfilename_', userid, '.jpg')
WHERE filename LIKE '%\_%jpg'
AND filename NOT LIKE 'http%';
Notes:
No need for variables. Any columns of rows being updated may be referenced
In mysql, use CONCAT() to add text values together
With LIKE, an underscore (_) has a special meaning - it means "any single character". If you want to match a literal underscore, you must escape it with a backslash (\)
Your two LIKE predicates may be safely merged into one for a simpler query
I'm trying to replace all instances of an old BB tag markup in a MySql database with a newer, slightly different one.
The old format is this...
[youtube:********]{Video ID}[/youtube:********]
Which I would like to replace with this...
[youtube:********]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v={Video ID}[/youtube:********]
Where the *'s are a random string of alpha-numeric characters. So simply REPLACE(feild, '[youtube:********]', '[youtube:********]http://www.youtube.com?watch?v= won't do unfortunately.
All the clumsy attempts I've made using REPLACE() and INSTR() have resulted in nasty things like [b]Bold Text[/b]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Is there a way to do this kind of pattern replacement in MySql? Possibly with Regular Expressions?
Thank you.
Is this what you tried?
UPDATE table SET Field = REPLACE(Field,']{',']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v={')
This would depend if there isnt any other occurences of ']{'
EDIT: You may also want to try:
UPDATE table SET Field = LEFT(Field,#) + 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v='+
RIGHT(Field,(Char_Length(Field)-#);
Just check the syntax with MYSQl docs. Char_LNEGTH() may need to be LENGTH() - im sure you get the idea
I found a CSV database of Cities/ZIP/GPS, and when I imported it, it added a " infront of the columns.
alt text http://www.grabup.com/uploads/58754a865eebd94c9aafaf7444b52d15.png?direct
I don't want to go in for 33,000 entries and do this manually, is there a query I can run that will remove the quotes?
i'm not a MySql expert but this should work: (based on my similar experience in Sql Server)
UPDATE table_name SET col_name = REPLACE(col_name, '"', '')
For more info on the REPLACE and other string parsing functions, see here:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_replace
in sql server you coud do:
update mytable set state= substring(state,2,29)
change the "29" to whatever the actual length is.
I am sure mysql must have equivalent syntax.
Repeat for each field, it looks like there is only a handful of them.
As an alternative you could filter the original csv document - isn't that easier?