Question

MySQL: Strip slashes from old data

Asked by: headzoo

Hi,
I inherited an old project, and a large database. Unfortunately the old developer let a lot of "slashed" string data enter the db. When displaying the data on a web page, I end up with a lot of slashed text. Example:

I get posts that aren\'t already cleaned.

Up until now I've been using PHP's stripslashes() on the text after pulling it from the database. What I'm looking for though is an SQL statement that I can run to clean up all the old entries, so I can stop running all the text through stripslashes() before displaying it.

I know I can run a PHP script to clean all the data, but there are a heck of a lot of entries, and that's going to take forever.

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Asked On
2009-03-08 at 12:38:16ID24210579
Tags

mysql

,

slashes

Topics

MySQL Server

,

PHP and Databases

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: jausionsPosted on 2009-03-08 at 12:48:58ID: 23830950

Have a look at the REPLACE() function [1]

// To replace \' into '

UPDATE myTable
SET myField = REPLACE(myField, '\\\'', '\'')
WHERE myField LIKE '%\\\''

// To replace \" into "

UPDATE myTable
SET myField = REPLACE(myField, '\\"', '"')
WHERE myField LIKE '%\\"'

[1] http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_replace

 

by: Ray_PaseurPosted on 2009-03-08 at 16:12:30ID: 23831888

"I know I can run a PHP script to clean all the data, but there are a heck of a lot of entries, and that's going to take forever."

Yep, that is the right approach.  Set up the script so it can run for a long time, blow up, and get restarted easily.  I've cleaned up some bad stuff by walking through the data base tables in "auto_increment" order, echoing out the key for each row that I have cleaned.  When the thing blows, I just take the last key from the prior execution and use that as the starting point for the next run.  

The good news here is that your "stripslashes" algorithm will not mung the data so you can rerun it several times over with no danger.

You can shorten the run time by making a select on only the rows that contain slashes, so if the data is like this, you'll only get one record...  Use MySQL LIKE to pick out these rows.

Bill Reilly
Joe Reilly
Mary O\'Reilly
Brian O'Reilly

Use mysql_real_escape_string() to put the fields back into the data base.

You can use an iterative technique to strip out all the slashes.  See code snippet.

Best of luck with it, ~Ray

<?php // RAY_stripslashes_db.php
 
$test_data = "Mary O\\\\\\\'Reilly";
var_dump($test_data);
 
$a = 0;
while ($a == 0)
{
   $old_data = stripslashes($test_data);
   if ($old_data == $test_data) $a = 1;
   $test_data = $old_data;
}
 
var_dump($test_data);

                                              
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by: headzooPosted on 2009-03-08 at 20:16:22ID: 31555572

I can't believe I over looked such a simple solution. The where clause actually missed most of them for some reason, but leaving off the where clause worked perfectly.

 

by: Ray_PaseurPosted on 2009-03-09 at 11:24:45ID: 23838912

@headzoo: did you actually test the solutions? ~Ray

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