DBSR provides functionality for committing search-and-replace-operations on MySQL databases. It's main advantage above using a simple REPLACE()-SQL statement is the support for parsing PHP serialized strings, which are commonly used in for example WordPress databases.
Since DBSR does its own parsing of serialized strings, it is also able to repair corrupted serializations, a problem often seen when less advanced search-replace scripts were used before on the same database.
Minimum supported PHP version is 5.3 and is tested with versions up to 7.4. PDO
is used for connecting with the database, so make sure you have the pdo and
pdo_mysql extensions enabled.
First, head over to the releases page and download the latest version of DBSR.
You can either download the CLI version which you can use from the command line, or the GUI version which can be uploaded to a webserver and accessed through a web browser.
Note: Some tutorials make you download this entire repository and put it on your web server. I do not recommend this. For most users, just downloading the GUI version (DBSearchReplace-GUI.php) and uploading that to your web server is the recommended way to use DBSR.
Note: Another thing I see many tutorials recommend is using the extensive search option. In most cases, if you are just replacing plain text values
in your WordPress database, you should not use this option. It will make
DBSR extremely slow and is not needed, everything will work fine without it.
The GUI of DBSR provides a simple to use, 4 step wizard for performing search and replace operations on your database. It has a number of handy features for auto-detecting and completing your settings, offering some automated checks to help prevent common mistakes, and the ability to delete itself after you've completed all your work.
Usage of the CLI version is best explained by the built-in --help output:
Usage: DBSearchReplace-CLI.php [options] -- SEARCH REPLACE [SEARCH REPLACE...]
DBSearchReplace-CLI.php --file FILENAME
CLI options:
--help display this help and exit
--version print version information and
exit
--file FILENAME JSON-encoded config file to load
--output text|json output format (default: text)
PDO options:
--host HOSTNAME hostname of the MySQL server
--port PORTNUMBER port number of the MySQL server
--user USERNAME username used for connecting to
the MySQL server
--password PASSWORD password used for connecting to
the MySQL server
--database DATABASE name of the database to be
searched
--charset CHARSET character set used for
connecting to the MySQL server
DBSR options:
--case-insensitive [true|false] use case-insensitive search and
replace (default: false)
--extensive-search [true|false] process *all* database rows
(default: false)
--search-page-size SIZE number of rows to process
simultaneously (default: 10000)
--var-match-strict [true|false] use strict matching
(default: true)
--floats-precision PRECISION up to how many decimals floats
should be matched (default: 5)
--convert-charsets [true|false] automatically convert character
sets (default: true)
--var-cast-replace [true|false] cast all replace-values to the
original type (default: true)
--db-write-changes [true|false] write changed values back to the
database (default: true)
--handle-serialize [true|false] interpret serialized strings as
their PHP types (default: true)
For an example of a configuration file, see example-config.json.
If you encounter any issues with DBSR, open an issue on GitHub and provide as much details as possible.
DBSR is free software licensed under the GPLv3. See LICENSE for more information.