FOR XML PATH

by | Feb 4, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

In creating xml data from table data, I came across the need to create empty elements even in there are null values in the columns I am querying.

I first used this logic to force the generation of the tag:

SELECT EmployeeID as "@EmpID", 
       FirstName  as "EmpName/First", 
       MiddleName as "EmpName/Middle", 
       LastName   as "EmpName/Last"
FROM   HumanResources.Employee E, Person.Contact C
WHERE  E.EmployeeID = C.ContactID
AND    E.EmployeeID=1
FOR XML PATH, ELEMENTS XSINIL

However that returned the result:

<row xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" EmpID="1">
  <EmpName>
    <First>Gustavo</First>
    <Middle xsi:nil="true" />
    <Last>Achong</Last>
  </EmpName>
</row>

I just wanted:

<row EmpID="1">
  <EmpName>
    <First>Gustavo</First>
    <Middle></Middle>
    <Last>Achong</Last>
  </EmpName>
</row>

So I changed the code to:

SELECT EmployeeID as "@EmpID", 
       ISNULL(FirstName,'')  as "EmpName/First", 
       ISNULL(MiddleName,'') as "EmpName/Middle", 
       ISNULL(LastName,'')   as "EmpName/Last"
FROM   HumanResources.Employee E, Person.Contact C
WHERE  E.EmployeeID = C.ContactID
AND    E.EmployeeID=1
FOR XML PATH, ELEMENTS