Title: regex SQL command for bulk URL update via wp-cli
Last modified: May 6, 2017

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# regex SQL command for bulk URL update via wp-cli

 *  [pro99](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pro99/)
 * (@pro99)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/regex-sql-command-for-bulk-url-update-via-wp-cli/)
 * We made URL permalink changes to WordPress sites, removing a no longer needed
   date in URLs and keeping just the domain, subfolder and postname.
 * from /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ to /%postname%/
 * In wordpress we made the following regex redirect: Source: /(\d*)/(\d*)/(\d*)/(.*),
   target: $4. While the 301 redirect is working perfectly we have hundreds of URL
   references in post contents that we’d like to update at once with WP-CLI. Does
   anyone know how to create a regular expression SQL command for this in WP-CLI
   to remove the date from URLs, making all internal links current again?

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Moderator [keesiemeijer](https://wordpress.org/support/users/keesiemeijer/)
 * (@keesiemeijer)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/regex-sql-command-for-bulk-url-update-via-wp-cli/#post-9105892)
 * Hi pro99
 * Before you do this **make a backup of your database**.
    [https://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database](https://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database)
   And test it works locally [https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/testing-wordpress-backups/](https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/testing-wordpress-backups/)
 * This is super important as many things can go wrong if you do a search replace
   on a database.
 * Because wp-cli doesn’t show you what gets replaced it might be a good idea to
   use this tool to see exactly what is replaced.
    [https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/](https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/)
 * Here is a simple regex to search for a domain `http://test.dev` with a date format
   followed by a forward slash. It captures what comes after that.
    Change the domain,
   check “regex” and put this in the “search for” field
 *     ```
       http:\/\/test\.dev\/\d{4}\/\d{2}\/\d{2}\/(.*?)
       ```
   
 * Put this in the “replace with” field
 *     ```
       http://test.dev/$1
       ```
   
 * Click “dry run” and it shows you exactly what will be replaced.
 * If your satisfied with the results you can use the same regex and do a dry run
   with wp-cli. Change the domain in the following.
 *     ```
       wp search-replace 'http:\/\/test\.dev\/\d{4}\/\d{2}\/\d{2}\/(.*?)' 'http://test.dev/\1' wp_posts --include-columns=post_content --skip-columns=guid --regex --dry-run
       ```
   
 * After you run this it will show you how many replacements will be made.
 * **Note**: Maybe you have to change the default table prefix `wp_` in `wp_posts`.
   See your wp-config.php file or use this command to see what the prefix is for
   the `posts` table.
 *     ```
       wp db tables
       ```
   
 * Remove `--dry-run` to make the replacements.
    -  This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by [keesiemeijer](https://wordpress.org/support/users/keesiemeijer/).
      Reason: add table prefix info
    -  This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by [keesiemeijer](https://wordpress.org/support/users/keesiemeijer/).

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘regex SQL command for bulk URL update via wp-cli’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [regex](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/regex/)
 * [sql](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/sql/)
 * [wp-cli](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/wp-cli/)

 * In: [Developing with WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/wp-advanced/)
 * 1 reply
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [keesiemeijer](https://wordpress.org/support/users/keesiemeijer/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/regex-sql-command-for-bulk-url-update-via-wp-cli/#post-9105892)
 * Status: not resolved

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