Question

I am very new to sql querys and I am looking for a way to remove the following string from anywhere in my database: [lesson-navigation] including the square brackets. (Some instances have an unnecessary extra space before and/or after the string that would be nice to delete as well if possible too.

This was a shortcode that I was inserting into my site, but then decided to implement it into the template instead. Now I have over 2000 instances of this in various places in my database and want to remove it.

Thanks in advance for your help.
~Cam

Answer 1

Use REPLACE() to perform a string replacement that removes the string from each column. If this string appears in multiple columns, you’ll need to perform the query below for each column, or specify each column in the query (second example):

UPDATE tablename SET columnname = REPLACE(columnname, '[lesson-navigation]', '');

/* Replace in multiple columns */
UPDATE tablename SET
  columnname = REPLACE(columnname, '[lesson-navigation]', ''),
  columnname2 = REPLACE(columnname2, '[lesson-navigation]', ''),
  columnname3 = REPLACE(columnname3, '[lesson-navigation]', '')
;