XML - Extract after a String and before a certain character - sql

Question

I've the following XML Code:
_RCFM*=.·<form><text id="NomeTransporteSAP" label="JOB: *" mandatory="true" multiline="true" readonly="false" visible="true">AA123EDC/NB: Cheque holding v05 TESTE PT 223427</text>
I'm trying to create a statement that allows me to get the ID: AA123EDC
For that I'm using:
SUBSTRING(col1, LEN(SUBSTRING(col1, 0, LEN(col1) - CHARINDEX ('DSI Request Number', col1))) + 1,
LEN(col1) - LEN(SUBSTRING(col1, 0, LEN(col1) - CHARINDEX ('DSI Request Number', col1)))
- LEN(SUBSTRING(col1, CHARINDEX ('</text><text id=', col1), LEN(col1))))
But it gives me the wrong string...
Anybody can give me a help?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Your first line is quite unclear (but you've tagged it with tsql...). It seems that you want to read a value form within an XML. Furthermore this value is not atomic, so you have to parse it out.
If my assumptions are correct, you should try it this way:
DECLARE #YourXML XML=
N'<form>
<text id="NomeTransporteSAP" label="JOB: *" mandatory="true" multiline="true" readonly="false" visible="true">AA123EDC/NB: Cheque holding v05 TESTE PT 223427</text>
</form>';
WITH ReadFromXML AS
(
SELECT #YourXML.value(N'(/form/text/text())[1]',N'nvarchar(max)') AS TheValue --AA123EDC/NB: Cheque holding v05 TESTE PT 223427
)
SELECT LEFT(TheValue,CHARINDEX('/',TheValue)-1)
FROM ReadFromXML;
This will use a CTE to retrieve the inner text in a derived table and cut away everything starting with the / using LEFT.
The CTE-approach is not necessary, but is much better to read.
If your XML is living within a table you can use the same approach, but in this case I'd use CROSS APPLY instead of the CTE.