Question

When I do

SELECT resrev_meta FROM resourcerevs WHERE resrev_meta LIKE '%attr%';

I get results like this

<attr><fileid>131</fileid></attr> 
<attr><fileid>326</fileid><width>360</width><height>640</height></attr> 

Question

Is it possible to have a RegEx that would only output the number between <fileid> and </fileid>?

Answer 1

Regex is probably not what your looking for. mysql supports xpath expressions.

This should give you what you need:

SELECT ExtractValue(resrev_meta,'//fileid')  AS fileid 
     FROM resourcerevs 
     WHERE resrev_meta LIKE '%attr%';

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/xml-functions.html#function_extractvalue

mysql> SELECT
    ->   ExtractValue('<a>ccc<b>ddd</b></a>', '/a') AS val1,
    ->   ExtractValue('<a>ccc<b>ddd</b></a>', '/a/b') AS val2,
    ->   ExtractValue('<a>ccc<b>ddd</b></a>', '//b') AS val3,
    ->   ExtractValue('<a>ccc<b>ddd</b></a>', '/b') AS val4,
    ->   ExtractValue('<a>ccc<b>ddd</b><b>eee</b></a>', '//b') AS val5;

+------+------+------+------+---------+
| val1 | val2 | val3 | val4 | val5    |
+------+------+------+------+---------+
| ccc  | ddd  | ddd  |      | ddd eee |
+------+------+------+------+---------+