Greetings,

Let’s suppose you have a mysql database and you need to update only a part of a field’s value, not all.

This can be done using the following query:

UPDATE `table` SET `field` = REPLACE(`field`, "old_string", "new_string");

Here’s how it will look like in a PHP Code:

<?php
$db_host = 'db_host'; // usually localhost
$db_user = 'db_username';
$db_pass = 'db_password';
$db_name = 'db_name';

$db = mysql_connect($db_host, $db_user, $db_pass)
or die ("Unable to connect to Database Server.");

mysql_select_db ($db_name, $db) or die ("Could not select database.");

$table_name = 'lists';

$table_field_name = 'category';

$initial_string = 'man';
$new_string = 'boy';

$query = "UPDATE `".$table_name."`
SET `".$table_field_name."`=REPLACE(`".$table_field_name."`,
'".$initial_string."', '".$new_string."');";

/* NOTE: You can add conditions to this query in case you want to update
a specific field ID like this:

UPDATE `table_name`
SET `field_name` = REPLACE(`field_name` "old_string", "new_string")
where field_id='id_number_here';
*/

$sql_query = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());

if($sql_query)
{
echo 'Table ' .$table_field_name. ' has been successfully updated.';
}
?>

Feel free to post any comments regarding this tutorial.

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