How to get a particular attribute from XML element in SQL Server

Question

I have something like the following XML in a column of a table:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<container>
  <param name="paramA" value="valueA" />
  <param name="paramB" value="valueB" />
  ...
</container>

I am trying to get the valueB part out of the XML via TSQL

So far I am getting the right node, but now I can not figure out how to get the attribute.

select xmlCol.query('/container/param[@name="paramB"]') from LogTable

I figure I could just add /@value to the end, but then SQL tells me attributes have to be part of a node. I can find a lot of examples for selecting the child nodes attributes, but nothing on the sibling atributes (if that is the right term).

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Try using the .value function instead of .query:

SELECT 
  xmlCol.value('(/container/param[@name="paramB"]/@value)[1]', 'varchar(50)') 
FROM  
  LogTable

The XPath expression could potentially return a list of nodes, therefore you need to add a [1] to that potential list to tell SQL Server to use the first of those entries (and yes - that list is 1-based - not 0-based). As second parameter, you need to specify what type the value should be converted to - just guessing here.

Marc

Answer 2

Depending on the the actual structure of your xml, it may be useful to put a view over it to make it easier to consume using 'regular' sql eg

CREATE VIEW vwLogTable
AS
SELECT
    c.p.value('@name', 'varchar(10)') name,
    c.p.value('@value', 'varchar(10)') value
FROM
    LogTable
    CROSS APPLY x.nodes('/container/param') c(p)
GO


-- now you can get all values for paramB as...
SELECT value FROM vwLogTable WHERE name = 'paramB'