Katanya:

Sure, just use DBI to connect to your database and use whatever SQL statement you use for spam removal:

use strict;
use warnings;
my $DB = DBI::connect(....);
$DB->do(q{

   delete from comments where message like '%SPAM%'

});
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As you can see, you don't really even need perl, since you can do it in the database.

Note: Untested.

As many will tell you, the hard part isn't doing the deletions, it's coming up with a reliable spam recognizer....

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

Right now I just want to test something simple, by just searching one field in the record for keywords like http, www, .com, etc. I know I could do this in the database, but since I'm learning a bit of perl scripting, and I can run it on my site, I thought this would be a good way to learn how I can apply things together. Thank you for replying =)

Learning Perl? Excellent!

Learning Perl by applying it when not needed and in a way that makes the specific problem more complex to solve? Not usually advised.

But for this quest: use DBI as recommended above; capture each row's id and the relevant field's contents to an array; use a regular expression to search the elements for whatever words you consider earmarks of spam (and NB roboticus' comment thereon) and when found, use the row id to tell your db engine to delete those rows.

Adopting this scheme will be a SMOP... but one that is actually fairly 'simple' and one which provides a really relevant problem case for your effort to learn Perl.




check Ln42!

Will this work for retrieving the two columns I want?

# Search the needed table and pull out needed columns
my $search = "SELECT comment_ID,comment_content FROM wp_comments"
my $sql = $db->prepare($search);
$sql->execute();

# Input fetched data into an array
my @retrievedData = "";
while (my @row = $sql->fetchrow_array()) {
    push @retrievedData, [@row];
}
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If that does I'm still trying to figure out how to search through the results. I only need to search through comment_content, and if a keyword is found, use the comment_ID to delete that row.

See Regular Expressions perlre

#!perl
use DBI;
use strict;
my $dbh = get_dbh(); # connect to db

# build regex
my @keyword = qw(www http .com);
my $words = join '|',@keyword;
my $regexp = qr/$words/i;
print "Regular Expression is $regexp\n";

# search for key words
my $sql = 'SELECT comment_ID,comment_content 
           FROM wp_comments';
           
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql);
$sth->execute();

my @spam = ();
while (my ($id,$content) = $sth->fetchrow_array()) {
  if ($content =~ /$regexp/ ){
    print "ID :  $id\ncomment : $content\n\n";
    push @spam,$id;
  }  
}

# delete records
my $sql_del = 'DELETE FROM wp_comments
               WHERE comment_ID = ?';

my $sth_del = $dbh->prepare($sql_del);
for my $id (@spam){
  # enable this when you are sure it's working !!
  #$sth->execute($id); 
  print "Deleted $id\n";
}
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poj

The weird thing is I already have a CAPTCHA installed since I am using Wordpress. I just wanted to try a Perl solution instead. Still trying to work out the code.