Change Wordpress Image URL without Search and Replace

Question

Is it possible either through PHP or SQL to update Wordpress image URLs without using search and replace?

I ask because I have several hundred that I need to get changed but I can't use search and replace because each URL has a unique number that I need to remove.

It's the number right after the month in the Wordpress image URL. Each one is unique and I need to have it removed to have the image display correctly.

What the URL is currently: https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/14212828/shutterstock_2345459.jpg

What the URL should be: https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/shutterstock_2345459.jpg

Answer 1

If your DBMS (which you did not specify using a tag) supports regular expressions, and, with that, the REGEXP_REPLACE() function, use it to replace a pattern consisting of a forward slash, five or more digits and again a forward slash, with just a forward slash:

WITH
-- your input ... plus another row with a different number as directory
indata(url) AS (
            SELECT 'https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/14212828/shutterstock_2345459.jpg'
  UNION ALL SELECT 'https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/28224848/shutterstock_2024121.jpg'
)
--- real query starts here ..
SELECT 
  REGEXP_REPLACE(url,'/\d{5,}/','/') AS new_url
, url
FROM indata;

|new_url                                                                |url                                                                             |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/shutterstock_2345459.jpg|https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/14212828/shutterstock_2345459.jpg|
|https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/shutterstock_2024121.jpg|https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/28224848/shutterstock_2024121.jpg|

Answer 2

The WordPress filter wp_get_attachment_url can be used to modify your attachment URL on demand without the need to modify your database contents.

add_filter('wp_get_attachment_url', 'modify_the_url');

function modify_the_url($url) {
    // Do something with your URL
    return $url;
}

Like most hooks/filters, there's additional parameters available to you if you set the accepted accepted_args depending on context.

add_filter('wp_get_attachment_url', 'modify_the_url', accepted_args: 2);

Allow for the attachment post ID to be available to your function

function modify_the_url($url,$post_id)