How do I remove strings using wildcards in wordpress post's content?

Question

This is my first question, so pardon me the ethics the first time. I am running a wordpress website., and I need to remove strings from all posts.

The string to be removed <li class="dZip">(combination of characters, even special)Download ZIP</a></li>

It varies according to the post. I could use a plugin, But plugins don't accept wildcards.

I tried running this in my phpmyadmin, but I don't see any result.,

This is the query I ran through phpmyadmin.

SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE(`post_content`,'<ul class="md_wholebook_list"><li class="dZip"><a href="(.*?)\.zip" title="(.*?)\.zip" download>Download ZIP</a></li></ul>','')

Example string :

<ul class="md_wholebook_list"><li class="dZip"><a href="https://example.com/demo/file.zip" title="file.zip" download>Download ZIP</a></li></ul>

I need to remove this whole string, with the link and filetile as varying strings.

You can try https://stackoverflow.com/a/38660574/5193536 because mysql 5 doesn't have REGex_REPLACE — nbk, Feb 10 '20 at 12:03
I think it must be resolved in code before insert into MySQL — Slava Rozhnev, Feb 10 '20 at 13:20
Are there any wordpress functions to do this?. or any php functions? — shanganithi, Feb 10 '20 at 15:51
@nbk Hi, I just upgraded to a website with updated mysql, Now the version is 8.0.18. — shanganithi, Feb 12 '20 at 12:48
please make some example rows to explain exactly what you want to find and removed. — nbk, Feb 12 '20 at 15:44
@nbk hi, Thank you in advance, I have updated the question with examples. — shanganithi, Feb 13 '20 at 09:37

nbk · Answer 1 · 2020-02-13T18:43:52.583

It is quite simple.

But make a BACKUP before doing this Update on your database

SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE('a<ul class="md_wholebook_list"><li class="dZip"><a href="https://example.com/demo/file.zip" title="file.zip" download>Download ZIP</a></li></ul>b',
'<ul class="md_wholebook_list"><li class="dZip">(.*)download>Download ZIP</a></li></ul>','');

SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE('a<ul class="md_wholebook_list"><li class="dZip"><a href="https://example.com/demo/file.zip" title="file.zip" download>Download ZIP</a></li></ul>b',
'<ul class="md_wholebook_list"><li class="dZip">(.*)download>Download ZIP</a></li></ul>','');

| REGEXP_REPLACE('a<ul class="md_wholebook_list"><li class="dZip"><a href="https://example.com/demo/file.zip" title="file.zip" download>Download ZIP</a></li></ul>b',
'<ul class="md_wholebook_list"><li class="dZip">(.*)download>Download ZIP</a></li></ul>','' |
| :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| ab                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |

db<>fiddle here

How do I remove strings using wildcards in wordpress post's content?

1 Answers1