Sql Server: How to Parse XML and Get Data as Comma Separated String Format

Introduction: In this article I am going to explain how to get comma separated values from xml data in sql server using two suitable examples.

In previous articles i explained How to Read or parse xml data and insert into sql table and Concatenate rows values as a comma separated string using for xml path and stuff in sql server and Drop or truncate parent table by dropping all foreign key constraints and CTE Recursive query to get employee manager hierarchy with level and 20 main differences between stored procedures and functions in sql server

Implementation: Let’s create two examples to understand how easily we can convert xml data to comma separated string format.

Let's suppose we have the XML data as string in the following format

DECLARE @EmployeeXml XML = '<ROOT>

                                                            <EMPLOYEE Id="2"/>

                                                            <EMPLOYEE Id="8"/>

                                                            <EMPLOYEE Id="6"/>

                                                            <EMPLOYEE Id="3"/>

                                                            <EMPLOYEE Id="1"/>

                                                      </ROOT>'

Example 1:

Suppose we want to get Employee Ids in comma separated string format from above xml string.

The query will be as:

SELECT STUFF(

(

            SELECT ', ' + col.value('@Id', 'VARCHAR(10)')

            FROM @EmployeeXml.nodes('//EMPLOYEE') AS tab(col)

            FOR XML PATH('')

), 1, 2, '') AS Result

Query result will be as: 

2, 8, 6, 3, 1

Example 2:

Suppose we want to get employee names in comma separated string format from xml --string. Since we have only Employee Ids in XML we need to join employee tables through employeeid. So let’s create employee table using following script

CREATE TABLE  tbEmployee

(

            EmployeeId                INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY,

            EmployeeName         VARCHAR(50),

            Age                             INT    

)

Enter some dummy data in table using following insert query:

INSERT tbEmployee

VALUES

('Salman',25),

('Ranbeer',21),

('Hrithik',22),

('Aamir',28),

('Shahid',24),

('Sidharth',30),

('Varun',29),

('Kabeer',24),

('Raj',23);

Check table data

SELECT *FROM tbEmployee

EmployeeId	EmployeeName	Age
1	Salman	25
2	Ranbeer	21
3	Hrithik	22
4	Aamir	28
5	Shahid	24
6	Sidharth	30
7	Varun	29
8	Kabeer	24
9	Raj	23

Now we need to join data from xml and employee table to get the desired result.

The query will be as: 

SELECT STUFF(

(

SELECT ',' + CAST(EmployeeName AS VARCHAR(100))

FROM

(

   SELECT EM1.EmployeeName FROM tbEmployee0 EM1

   INNER JOIN (SELECT col.value('@Id','INT') AS EmployeeId FROM       @EmployeeXml.nodes('//EMPLOYEE')tab(col)) EM2

  ON EM1.EmployeeId=EM2.EmployeeId

)tb

ORDER BY EmployeeName

FOR XML PATH('')

), 1, 1, '') AS Result

Query result will be as: 

Hrithik, Kabeer, Ranbeer, Salman, Sidharth

  Now over to you:

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