Question

I have never used XML before. I am trying to send a single XML file to SQL Server, where it will (hopefully) be able to be deconstructed and inserted into various tables.

I’m building tests. So for each test there are X questions, and for each question there are X answer options and 1 explanation of the correct answer. Is the following XML example valid? Am I missing anything that will simplify it?

<test>
    <testid>1</testid>
    <qablock>
        <question>
            <question_number>1</question_number>
            <question_text>What is 1 + 1?</question_text>
        </question>
        <explanation>It's 2.</explanation>
        <options>
            <option>
                <option_number>1</option_number>
                <option_value>1</option_value>
                <is_correct>0</is_correct>
            </option>
            <option>
                <option_number>2</option_number>
                <option_value>2</option_value>
                <is_correct>1</is_correct>
            </option>
            <option>
                <option_number>3</option_number>
                <option_value>3</option_value>
                <is_correct>0</is_correct>
            </option>
            <option>
                <option_number>4</option_number>
                <option_value>4</option_value>
                <is_correct>0</is_correct>
            </option>
            <option>
                <option_number>5</option_number>
                <option_value>5</option_value>
                <is_correct>0</is_correct>
            </option>
        </options>
    </qablock>
    <qablock>
        <question>
            <question_number>2</question_number>
            <question_text>What is 2 + 2?</question_text>
        </question>
        <explanation>It's 4.</explanation>
        <options>
            <option>
                <option_number>1</option_number>
                <option_value>1</option_value>
                <is_correct>0</is_correct>
            </option>
            <option>
                <option_number>2</option_number>
                <option_value>2</option_value>
                <is_correct>0</is_correct>
            </option>
            <option>
                <option_number>3</option_number>
                <option_value>3</option_value>
                <is_correct>0</is_correct>
            </option>
            <option>
                <option_number>4</option_number>
                <option_value>4</option_value>
                <is_correct>1</is_correct>
            </option>
            <option>
                <option_number>5</option_number>
                <option_value>5</option_value>
                <is_correct>0</is_correct>
            </option>
        </options>
    </qablock>
</test>

Answer 1

What you’ve got there is perfectly valid XML. It doesn’t have a schema associated (i.e. so you can validate the structure / ensure that an XML file you’re given is as expected before using it so you don’t get unexpected results.

You can add an XML header – that would help as it would tell the parser what character set to use – also check that you save the XML file with the encoding you specify in the header (let me know if you need more explanation on this point).

Finally though what you’ve got is fine, personally I’d write that XML slightly differently to make it smaller and easier to read. There are no hard rules there, but generally speaking keeping file size down is good and being readable is good.

Finally I’d probably wrap this in a tests element; that way if you want to upload more than one test at a time it’s easy to do (but you can still use this for one file at a time should you wish) – again no hard rule, but building in flexibility is always good.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<tests>
    <test testid='1'>
        <qablock number='1'>
            <question>What is 1 + 1?</question>
            <explanation>It's 2.</explanation>
            <options>
                <option number='1' value='1' />
                <option number='2' value='2' correct='true' />
                <option number='3' value='3' />
                <option number='4' value='4' />
                <option number='5' value='5' />
            </options>
        </qablock>
        <qablock number='2'>
            <question>What is 2 + 2?</question>
            <explanation>It's 4.</explanation>
            <options>
                <option number='1' value='1' />
                <option number='2' value='2'/>
                <option number='3' value='3' />
                <option number='4' value='4' correct='true'  />
                <option number='5' value='5' />
            </options>
        </qablock>
    </test>
</tests>

Hope that helps.

———–edit—————-

Here’s an example of this with SQL’s xml data type;

declare @x xml

set @x = '<tests>
    <test testid=''1''>
        <qablock number=''1''>
            <question>What is 1 + 1?</question>
            <explanation>It''s 2.</explanation>
            <options>
                <option number=''1'' value=''1'' />
                <option number=''2'' value=''2'' correct=''true'' />
                <option number=''3'' value=''3'' />
                <option number=''4'' value=''4'' />
                <option number=''5'' value=''5'' />
            </options>
        </qablock>
        <qablock number=''2''>
            <question>What is 2 + 2?</question>
            <explanation>It''s 4.</explanation>
            <options>
                <option number=''1'' value=''1'' />
                <option number=''2'' value=''2''/>
                <option number=''3'' value=''3'' />
                <option number=''4'' value=''4'' correct=''true''  />
                <option number=''5'' value=''5'' />
            </options>
        </qablock>
    </test>
</tests>'

select @x.value('(/tests/test/qablock[@number=''2'']/question/text())[1]','nvarchar(max)') Question
, @x.value('(/tests/test/qablock[@number=''2'']/options/option[@correct=''true'']/@number)[1]','nvarchar(max)') Answer