Replacing a string with a MySQL query is a simple process that can be done in minutes. The following steps will help you replace a string with a MySQL query:

  1. Log in to your MySQL server.
  2. Type the following command into the mysql shell: mysql -u root -p
  3. Replace “string” with the desired MySQL query. For example, if you want to replace “string” with “SELECT * FROM users”, type the following command: mysql -u root -p SELECT * FROM users;

All I’m trying to do is search and replace across my WordPress database with a simple query — for instance, when we switched HTG over to HTTPS, we had a ton of old links and images pointing to the HTTP version. So we had to update all links to be , and with nearly 20,000 post records in our database, that would require hiring a hundred interns. Or… a single SQL statement.

So now, hopefully marking the last time I ever look this up, the syntax for replacing a string using a MySQL query:

For the purposes of our example, updating all links and images to HTTPS in WordPress, it ended up being:

And with that, I saved the company from hiring 100 people to manually replace all of those links. I deserve a raise.

Are you a newb? If you don’t know how to open a MySQL prompt, well, you probably shouldn’t be reading this article. But just in case, you can open up a terminal and use the values in wp-config.php (assuming you are using WordPress) to connect to the database, and then paste in the SQL statement.

Have I mentioned that you probably should back up your WordPress database before you run this? And you should definitely test it on a development or QA environment? Otherwise you’re going to break everything. Don’t be that guy.