Reputation: 45
I have a table with a mix of escaped and non-escaped XML. Of course, the data I need is escaped. For example, I have:
<Root>
<InternalData>
<Node>
<ArrayOfComment>
<Comment>
<SequenceNo>1</SequenceNo>
<IsDeleted>false</IsDeleted>
<TakenByCode>397</TakenByCode>
</Comment>
</ArrayOfComment>
</Node>
</InternalData>
</Root>
As you can see, the data in the Node tag is all escaped. I can use a query to obtain the Node data, but how can I convert it to XML in SQL so that it can be parsed and broken up? I'm pretty new to using XML in SQL, and I can't seem to find any examples of this.
Thanks
Upvotes: 4
Views: 5673
Reputation: 85126
Your best bet might be to look into a HTML Decoding UDF. I did a quick search and found this one:
http://www.andreabertolotto.net/Articles/HTMLDecodeUDF.aspx
You may want to modify it so it only decodes >
and <
. The one above seems to go above and beyond your needs.
UPDATE
@Cyberkiwi's solution seems to be a bit cleaner. I will leave this up in case the version of SQL Server you are running doesn't support his solution.
Upvotes: 0
Reputation: 107826
You have not given enough information about your end goal, but this will get you very close. FYI - You had two missing ; both after comment>
declare @xml xml
set @xml = '
<Root>
<InternalData>
<Node>
<ArrayOfComment>
<Comment>
<SequenceNo>1</SequenceNo>
<IsDeleted>false</IsDeleted>
<TakenByCode>397</TakenByCode>
</Comment>
</ArrayOfComment>
</Node>
</InternalData>
</Root>
'
select convert(xml, n.c.value('.', 'varchar(max)'))
from @xml.nodes('Root/InternalData/Node/text()') n(c)
Output
<ArrayOfComment>
<Comment>
<SequenceNo>1</SequenceNo>
<IsDeleted>false</IsDeleted>
<TakenByCode>397</TakenByCode>
</Comment>
</ArrayOfComment>
The result is an XML column that you can put into a variable or cross-apply into directly to get data from the XML fragment.
Upvotes: 5