Question

If I do

Declare @t table(Email xml)
Declare @email varchar(100) = 'xxx&[e-mail]'
Insert into @t  
select '<Emails> <Email>' + @email +'</Email></Emails>'
select * From @t

I will get expected error

Msg 9411, Level 16, State 1, Line 8
XML parsing: line 1, character 27, semicolon expected

One solution which I found almost everywhere(including SO) is to replace '&' with '& and it works

Insert into @t  
select CAST('<Emails><Email>' + REPLACE(@email, '&', '&amp;') + '</Email></Emails>' AS XML)

Output

<Emails><Email>xxx&amp;[e-mail]</Email></Emails>

However, I was trying with CData approach (just another way to approach the problem)

Declare @t table(Email xml)
Declare @email varchar(100) = 'xxx&[e-mail]'
Insert into @t  
Select CAST('<![CDATA[Emails> <Email>' + @email + '</Email> </Emails]]>' AS XML)
select * From @t

When I got the below output

Emails> <Email>xxx&[e-mail]</Email> </Emails

What I am trying to achieve is to store the data as it is i.e. the desired output should be

<Emails><Email>xxx&[e-mail]</Email></Emails>

Is it at all possible?

I know that the replace function will fail if any other special character that xml fails to understand will be passed as an input to it e.g. ‘<‘ i which case again we need to replace it…

Thanks

Answer 1

Tags are PCDATA, not CDATA, so don’t put them in the CDATA section.