Select values from XML field in SQL Server 2008

Just looking at my XML field, my rows look like this:

<person><firstName>Jon</firstName><lastName>Johnson</lastName></person>
<person><firstName>Kathy</firstName><lastName>Carter</lastName></person>
<person><firstName>Bob</firstName><lastName>Burns</lastName></person>

Note that these are three rows in my table.

I'd like to return a SQL result as a table as in

Jon  | Johnson
Kathy| Carter
Bob  | Burns

What query will accomplish this?

Solution 1:

Given that the XML field is named 'xmlField'...

SELECT 
[xmlField].value('(/person//firstName/node())[1]', 'nvarchar(max)') as FirstName,
[xmlField].value('(/person//lastName/node())[1]', 'nvarchar(max)') as LastName
FROM [myTable]

Solution 2:

Considering that XML data comes from a table 'table' and is stored in a column 'field': use the XML methods, extract values with xml.value(), project nodes with xml.nodes(), use CROSS APPLY to join:

SELECT 
    p.value('(./firstName)[1]', 'VARCHAR(8000)') AS firstName,
    p.value('(./lastName)[1]', 'VARCHAR(8000)') AS lastName
FROM table 
    CROSS APPLY field.nodes('/person') t(p)

You can ditch the nodes() and cross apply if each field contains exactly one element 'person'. If the XML is a variable you select FROM @variable.nodes(...) and you don't need the cross apply.

Solution 3:

This post was helpful to solve my problem which has a little different XML format... my XML contains a list of keys like the following example and I store the XML in the SourceKeys column in a table named DeleteBatch:

<k>1</k>
<k>2</k>
<k>3</k>

Create the table and populate it with some data:

CREATE TABLE dbo.DeleteBatch (
    ExecutionKey INT PRIMARY KEY,
    SourceKeys XML)

INSERT INTO dbo.DeleteBatch ( ExecutionKey, SourceKeys )
SELECT 1, 
    (CAST('<k>1</k><k>2</k><k>3</k>' AS XML))

INSERT INTO dbo.DeleteBatch ( ExecutionKey, SourceKeys )
SELECT 2, 
    (CAST('<k>100</k><k>101</k>' AS XML))

Here's my SQL to select the keys from the XML:

SELECT ExecutionKey, p.value('.', 'int') AS [Key]
FROM dbo.DeleteBatch
    CROSS APPLY SourceKeys.nodes('/k') t(p)

Here's the query results...

ExecutionKey    Key
1   1
1   2
1   3
2   100
2   101

Solution 4:

This may answer your question:

select cast(xmlField as xml) xmlField into tmp from (
select '<person><firstName>Jon</firstName><lastName>Johnson</lastName></person>' xmlField
union select '<person><firstName>Kathy</firstName><lastName>Carter</lastName></person>'
union select '<person><firstName>Bob</firstName><lastName>Burns</lastName></person>'
) tb

SELECT
    xmlField.value('(person/firstName)[1]', 'nvarchar(max)') as FirstName
    ,xmlField.value('(person/lastName)[1]', 'nvarchar(max)') as LastName
FROM tmp

drop table tmp