Removing Pages from the Database

Note: This documentation is for an old version of Webinator. The latest documentaion is here.

Removing Pages from the Database

To remove a specific page from the database execute two SQL statements using the -s option. First delete the record from the html table, then delete all related records from the references table. For example; to remove the page http://www.mysite.com/junk.html use the following commands:

gw -s "delete from html where Url='www.mysite.com/junk.html'"
gw -s "delete from refs where Url='www.mysite.com/junk.html'

Note the missing http:// prefix. It is not stored in the database.

You may wish to perform a ``select'' before a ``delete'' to see what you are going to delete before committing to it. Using the above example; use the following command to find the title of the document you are about to delete:

gw -s "select Url,Title from html
       where Url='www.mysite.com/junk.html'"

To remove a group of related pages from the database use a REX Regular Expression to specify the substring or pattern common to all of the pages you want to delete. Precede the substring or expression with slash ('/'). To delete all pages under the /testdir tree use the following commands:

gw -s "delete from html where Url like '/www.mysite.com/testdir'"
gw -s "delete from refs where Url like '/www.mysite.com/testdir'"
gw -index

The like means search the field for the argument. The leading slash (/) means do a regular expression match. This will delete every record whose Url contains the substring ``www.mysite.com/testdir''. See the query construction documentation at http://www.thunderstone.com/webinator/ for help building ``like'' statements. Also remember to run with the -index option to update the indices after deleting numerous pages to speed up searches.