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Selecting null value from XML in SQL Server

Asked 2010-07-08T21:37:09.117
14

I'm trying to select from XML that has a null as one of the attributes. Instead of returning a null, it returns a 0. What am I doing wrong?
See code below to replicate:

declare @a xml
select @a = '<TestSet xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instace">
  <Element>
    <Property1>1</Property1>
    <Property2>1</Property2>
  </Element>
  <Element>
    <Property1 xsi:nil="true" />
    <Property2>2</Property2>
  </Element>
  <Element>
    <Property1>3</Property1>
    <Property2>3</Property2>
  </Element>
</TestSet>'

 select ParamValues.TaskChainerTask.query('Property1').value('.','int') as Property1,
        ParamValues.TaskChainerTask.query('Property2').value('.','int') as Property2
   from @a.nodes('(/TestSet/Element)') as ParamValues(TaskChainerTask)

returns:

Property1   Property2
1           1
0           2
3           3

This returns the same thing:

declare @a xml
select @a = '<TestSet xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instace">
  <Element>
    <Property1>1</Property1>
    <Property2>1</Property2>
  </Element>
  <Element>
    <Property1 xsi:nil="true" />
    <Property2>2</Property2>
  </Element>
  <Element>
    <Property1>3</Property1>
    <Property2>3</Property2>
  </Element>
</TestSet>'

 select ParamValues.TaskChainerTask.query('Property1').value('.','int') as Property1,
        ParamValues.TaskChainerTask.query('Property2').value('.','int') as Property2
   from @a.nodes('(/TestSet/Element)') as ParamValues(TaskChainerTask)

Thanks in advance.

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1 Answer

2

I've simply used NULLIF to turn empty strings into NULLs as needed.

You can generate nil now using FOR XML, but I've never worked out how to parse it sorry...

answered 2010-07-08T23:27:40.613

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