Posts tagged ‘regex’

One of the most useful features of Automated editor is its search and replace function. You can set this up in a rule and use either replace one string with another directly, use regex to find matches and then replace them, or do the same to remove strings. Furthermore you can choose to just replace or remove a specific instance or all (e.g. replace 2nd instance or all instance’s of string ‘x’ with ‘y’) AND ALL THIS CAN BE RE-RUN AUTOMATICALLY!

There are a few important things to remember when using string/regex search & replace/remove within AutomatedEditor:

Remember its the HTML content of your posts Search and replace operates on

• You will need to make sure you remember to switch tabs to “HTML” in the add new/edit posts page if you want to see the HTML and know what to replace. 
• For example a string may appear one way in the browser (Visual Tab) and another in the source, Automated Editor plugin works on the source, a lower level to give you more control.
• Check out this post for more information on using regex to replace specific html in automated editor rules

Search and replace is Case Sensitive by default

• This lets you be more specific with your search and replace within the plugin
• Use multiple versions of rules or regex rules if you need to target both cases 
Useful: Our guide to using Search and replace, string replacement and regex (regular expressions) to fix up your blog post html content (parsing blog post html with Automated editor, regex and not!)

 

So remember, string replace is case sensitive, use spaces at the start of strings to get specific words and other similar tricks, triple think through your automation rules to avoid nearly-infinite loops and ask if you need more help!!