Question

I want to get the contents of a sql table using xml:

projectID - projectName - customerID -customerName - city

i want to list all columns in xml tags and nest the customer seperately inside a project element

how can i then use this in .net correctly?

Answer 1

You can transform the table row into XML using by using xmlelement:

(select xmlelement (name Project, 
   xmlattributes(p.projectID as id), 
   xmlelement(p.name as Name),
   xmlelement(name Customer,
      xmlattributes(p.customerID as id), 
      xmlforest(p.customerName as Name, p.city as City)
   ))
)
from 
   TableName p

You need to replace ‘TableName’ with whatever your table is called. This basically returns data as XML and nests a new customer element inside a parent project tag. This is the XML outputted:

<Project id="1">
   <Project Name>Manhatten Project</Project>
   <Customer id="200">
      <Name>Jim Doe</Name>
      <City>New York</City>
   </Customer>
</Project>

You can then parse the XML in .net with the Read() method. If you’ve not used XML with .net before, read this article for a general introduction.