DB Replacer entire DOM in articles?

Hi there Regular Labs / Peter,

I’m planning to purchase the pro version of DB Replacer because I’m facing a major update of many Joomla articles in 5 languages. The basic HTML structure is the same for all languages, but a new layout requires the HTML structure to be modified without replacing the content of the inner DIVs. It’s the surrounding structure that needs to be wrapped in a new way. Certain content structures also need to be rearranged slightly. All content has sensible “classes.”

I’ve tried using (* = All), but I’m not entirely sure I understand it.

Find:

Change to:

In other words, is it possible to take the entire DOM of an article and change it to another DOM while preserving (*) the content/snippets and other language-related elements?

I hope this makes some sense to you. This would be an enormous time saver for me if you could give me a hint on that.
/ Ulric

Thanks for your reply – I’ve looked at docs4.regularlabs.com/dbreplacer/tutorial/regular-expressions , but it doesn’t immediately make sense for my challenge of performing advanced search and replace to change the DOM in articles while preserving the content. I guess I’ll need to dive deeper into regular expressions. Can you refer me to more detailed beginner tutorials?

Best regards,
Ulric

Thanks, Peter – It might be just a bit too advanced for me; after all, I’m only human at the time 🙂 But I’ll dive into it a bit and see if I can succeed by searching and replacing small chunks over several attempts. Otherwise, it might end up being the big manual overhaul.

P.S. Sorry for writing "confidential" – it was more to hide my incompetence.

Thanks for now!
Best, Ulric

Yes, that’s about as far as my brain can take me right now: searching and replacing at the beginning and then at the end to preserve the content – and the free version of Replacer can handle that just fine. I was thinking I could further optimize it with the pro version and regular expressions and make a million in 20 seconds, but regular expressions are something I currently don’t have deeper knowledge of, and they’re quite advanced.

Still, I don’t understand the asterisk (*). Is there any way I can use it simply, or is it part of understanding regular expressions?
"You can match the entire value of a field by placing a single asterisk * in the search area."

There’s only one way to manage regular expression – study and get to know them! 🙂
Tanks again Peter / Ulric

Okay, but what is a cell/field (entire content of a cell) in the database as opposed to a table – Could it be an article in the table content?

Yes, I completely understand, and it’s been a great help so far. That’s why I’ve registered and purchased a pro subscription of DB Replacer for my own small setup. I’ll probably have a few questions a long the way.

Best regards Ulric