Fix serialized data broken due to editing MySQL database in a text editor?

Question

Background: I downloaded a *.sql backup of my WordPress site\'s database, and replaced all instances of the old database table prefix with a new on

Answer 1

I personally don't like working in PHP, or placing my DB credentials in an public file. I created a ruby script to fix serializations that you can run locally:

https://github.com/wsizoo/wordpress-fix-serialization

Context Edit: I approached fixing serialization by first identifying serialization via regex, and then recalculating the byte size of the contained data string.

$content_to_fix.gsub!(/s:([0-9]+):\"((.|\n)*?)\";/) {"s:#{$2.bytesize}:\"#{$2}\";"}

I then update the specified data via an escaped sql update query.

escaped_fix_content = client.escape($fixed_content)

query = client.query("UPDATE #{$table} SET #{$column} = '#{escaped_fix_content}' WHERE #{$column_identifier} LIKE '#{$column_identifier_value}'")