How to convert a delimited string to XML?

Question

Hi there,
Please help me to convert a pipe delimited string into XML, e.g.
string -------SubName:abc|SuvValue:123|
required XML:
<ROWS>
<ROW>
<SubName>abc</SubName>
<SubValue>123</SubValue>
</ROW>
</ROWS>
or
string -------abc|123|
required XML:
<ROWS>
<ROW>
<SubName>abc</SubName>
<SubValue>123</SubValue>
</ROW>
</ROWS>
-----i am trying to first parse the string into a table type and then using the DBMS_XMLGen.getXML function but unable to get values from table type...
any prompt response is highly appriciated...
Regards, Hassan

Answer 1

Hi Hassan,
If your version supports it (ie 10gR2 and upwards), you can use XQuery to directly parse the string and generate the XML :
SQL> SELECT XMLQuery(
  2   '<ROWS>
  3    <ROW> {
  4     for $i in ora:tokenize($str,"\|")
  5     return
  6      if ($i) then element {substring-before($i,":")} {substring-after($i,":")}
  7      else ()
  8   } </ROW>
  9   </ROWS>'
10   passing sys_xmlgen('SubName:abc|SubValue:123|') as "str"
11   returning content
12  ).getClobVal()
13  FROM dual;
XMLQUERY('<ROWS><ROW>{FOR$IINO
<ROWS><ROW><SubName>abc</SubName><SubValue>123</SubValue></ROW></ROWS>
Each element is built based on its name from the input string.