Want to replace a string in all the posts? Let’s do it!
Access your site
First connect to your Droplet via SSH, and enter the Docker container for your Discourse instances:
cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app
WARNING
We strongly recommend you take a full backup before proceeding, and make sure your string replacement is specific enough to affect only the places you want it to. If this string replacement goes wrong, every post on your site will look broken!
Remap all posts containing a specific string
Basic Case-sensitive Remap
Run the following command, substituting find with the string you wish to replace and replace with the replacement string. Note that this does not respect word boundaries.
rake 'posts:remap[find,replace]'
Example results:
find —> replace
Find —> Find
FIND —> FIND
finders keepers —> replaceers keepers
finding —> replaceing
This method can be useful for tasks such as replacing emojis:
rake 'posts:remap[:slightly_smiling:,:slight_smile:]'
The above command will replace all occurrences of :slightly_smiling: with :slight_smile:.
Case-insensitive Remap
rake 'posts:remap[find,replace,string,true]'
Example results:
find —> replace
Find —> replace
FIND —> replace
finders keepers —> replaceers keepers
finding —> replaceing
Regex Remap
If you need more specificity and feel a little adventurous, you can use regex!
To handle word boundaries, you currently need to format your command like so:
rake 'posts:remap[(?<!\\w)(?=\\w)find(?<=\\w)(?!\\w),replace,regex]'
Example results:
replace —> replace
Find —> Find
FIND —> FIND
finders keepers —> finders keepers
finding —> finding
Remove/Delete all occurrences of a word/string
The concept is the same as above, except you are removing a word entirely instead of replacing it:
Basic Case-sensitive Delete
rake 'posts:delete_word[word-to-delete]'
Case-insensitive Delete
rake 'posts:delete_word[word-to-delete,string,true]'
Regex Delete
rake 'posts:delete_word[\\[color=#[0-9a-fA-F]{3\,6}\\],regex]'
Example results:
[color=#ff3333] —>
[color=#ffffff]testing —> testing
[color=#101010]testing[/color] —> testing[/color]