Question

I have a very complex task – create a software that imports XMl files to MSSQL database. There is one serious problem – each file has different structure than datatable. Example :

DATABASE:
It has columns like : ImageURL, Title, Content

XML:
Each XML file is different , I’ll give you two examples :

1. <contents>
       <ImageURL>www.123.com/image.png</ImageURL>
       <Title>Some text</title>
       <Content>Content of item</Content>
   </contents>
   <contents>
       <ImageURL>www.123.com/image.png</ImageURL>
       <Title>Some text</title>
       <Content>Content of item</Content>
   </contents>
   

2.

<item imageURL="url" title="title" content="content">

Is there any open source solution to this ?

* UPDATE *

I forgot to let you know that I will be using this code with an ASP.NET application in following steps:

1. The user selects the url of the XML document which he wants to import
2. The user would selectthe tags he wants to import to the database in GUI
3. in code behind, rule for importing current file will be created and stored to database .

Any tips/tricks how to achieve this in the most simple way ? if you don’t have source code, please give me some hints. thanks
BE AWARE THAT EACH FILE HAS DIFFERENT STRUCTURE

Answer 1

You need to figure out the different version you have and write some code to handle each xml-structure.

You can do like this in SQL Server

1:

declare @XML xml

set @XML = 
'<contents>
    <ImageURL>www.123.com/image.png</ImageURL>
    <Title>Some text</Title>
    <Content>Content of item</Content>
</contents>
<contents>
    <ImageURL>www.123.com/image.png</ImageURL>
    <Title>Some text</Title>
    <Content>Content of item</Content>
</contents>'

select 
  N.value('ImageURL[1]', 'varchar(max)') as ImageURL,
  N.value('Title[1]', 'varchar(max)') as Title,
  N.value('Content[1]', 'varchar(max)') as Content
from @XML.nodes('/contents') as T(N)

Result:

ImageURL               Title      Content
---------------------  ---------  ---------------
www.123.com/image.png  Some text  Content of item
www.123.com/image.png  Some text  Content of item

2:

declare @XML xml
set @XML = '<item imageURL="url" title="title" content="content"></item>'

select 
  N.value('@imageURL', 'varchar(max)') as ImageURL,
  N.value('@title', 'varchar(max)') as Title,
  N.value('@content', 'varchar(max)') as Content
from @XML.nodes('item') as T(N)

Result:

ImageURL   Title     Content
--------   -----     -------
url        title     content

3.

declare @XML xml

set @XML = 
'<contents>
  <content>
    <someOtherNode>
      <ImageURL>www.FirstURL.com/image.png</ImageURL>
    </someOtherNode>
  </content>
</contents>
<contents>
  <content>
    <someOtherNode>
      <ImageURL>www.SecondURL.com/image.png</ImageURL>
    </someOtherNode>
  </content>
</contents>'

select 
  N.value('ImageURL[1]', 'varchar(max)') as ImageURL
from @XML.nodes('/contents/content/someOtherNode') as T(N)

Result:

ImageURL
---------------------------
www.FirstURL.com/image.png
www.SecondURL.com/image.png

4.

declare @XML xml

set @XML = 
'<content>
   <imageURL>
     <url>first url</url>
   </imageURL>
   <info>
     <title>title 1</title>
     <text>text 1</text>
   </info>
 </content>
 <content>
   <imageURL>
     <url>second url</url>
   </imageURL>
   <info>
     <title>title 2</title>
     <text>text 2</text>
   </info>
 </content>'

select 
  N.value('imageURL[1]/url[1]', 'varchar(max)') as ImageURL,
  N.value('info[1]/title[1]', 'varchar(max)') as Title,
  N.value('info[1]/text[1]', 'varchar(max)') as Content
from @XML.nodes('/content') as T(N)

Result:

ImageURL    Title    Content
---------   -------  -------
first url   title 1  text 1
second url  title 2  text 2